Partners
by Survivor at midnight
Summary: She was his partner now, and he was supposed to look out for her, the same way she was supposed to look out for him. Hmm. Proceed with caution, indeed.
1. Infiltration

**Update: April 7th, 2016**

So here is that new story I've promised. This is only chapter one, and again, don't be expecting consistent updates. This is an Appleseed movie-verse fan fiction, and a whole bunch of cameos are going to appear. I mean a lot. I'm spreading these cameos out over eleven different animes/cartoons/tv shows, with multiples per show sometimes.

Now this is the story where I'm going to try something. If you can guess the cameo and the anime/cartoon/tv show that he/she/they/it is/are from, you get a small prize. Virtual cookies, an idea for a story, a collab, a question hat I must answer truthfully, etc., and I will announce them all at the beginning of the next chapter. But you also have to be truthful and tell me whether or not you got the right answer before they are revealed.

That being said, the cameos aren't appearing just yet, but keep your eyes peeled!

Disclaimer: i te le lava appleseed (Samoan)

* * *

It was dark outside the craft that carried three figures. There were no stars out; the clods had obscured them all, even the supposed-to-be full moon. But this was preferred for this particular mission. Darkness would be the best cover they could get. They would be little more than dark blobs moving against a dark sky, which - hopefully - their enemy would assume to be sea birds.

Speaking of their enemy, a dark shape, an island, loomed out of the sea that they were crossing. At first glance, it was exceptionally unexceptional. Dense jungle looked like short curly hair. A tiny mountain range made like a strange type of hat. Gorges and canyons became the mouth that the island used to breathe and swallow trespassers up whole. The island was definitely big enough to be home to a small, self-sufficient city, but even now there was no sign of light. No houses, not even a campfire to indicate human life here.

One particular figure peered out of a window. Well, this was strange. They were told that there were at least a hundred people on this island. The figure sighed and turned, checking in one final time with Headquarters before this mission actually started.

"HQ, this is officer 109, we've reached the drop point without any complications. Preparing to enter enemy ground in T-90 seconds," a female voice spoke into her comlink as she tightened the straps on one of the specialized gloves of her combat suit. Besides her, two other larger figures were checking their weapons, the soft _shick, shick_ of metal against metal unnaturally loud in the cabin of the aircraft they all rode. They stayed silent as their teammate communicated with their Commander.

 _"Copy 109. 113, 117, keep an eye out for anything unusual. I expected some type of retaliation from them by now, but it appears as if they are either waiting for you three, or just didn't see you, which is highly unlikely. Be on your toes, and remember your mission. Find out why all those planes and boats went MIA,"_ a gruff male spoke into the communication system, his voice distorted over the long distance. The three operatives confirmed their mission and cut communications with HQ for the time being.

"119, copy. Out."

"113, copy. Out."

"117, copy. Out."

All three climbed into the cockpits of huge machines, Said huge machines coming alive to secure their riders and provide for their safety. The figures maneuvered over to the jump door and dropped from the invisible WASP carrier and landed in the dense brush of the jungle-esque island after a short free-fall. The heavy mechanical bodies crashed easily through the dense multi-layered canopy, protecting the figures inside them from the snapping branches and stiff leaves. All three landed almost at the same time, in the same position – one knee down on the ground, the opposite hand bracing the huge form. Dust and rocks shot up from the large impact, partially obscuring the forms of Olympus ESWAT landmates. The one with a different head than the other two got up first and hoisted his oversized Seburo Cento-Master onto his shoulder with one of his bigger arms and activated his personal comlink.

"What's up with this? How can so many heavily armed vessels and aircrafts just up and vanish when we get in without even air turbulence?"

The figure in the middle got up and tilted its head slightly. "Beats me," came the female voice from before. "I thought all this disappearing stuff ended when they figured out the game at the Bermuda Triangle."

The third figure finally stood, his voice similar to that of the first, only lacking a slight mechanical touch. "Yeah, well we're probably expected. Best not keep them waiting, hmm?"

The other two figures nodded and all three turned as a single unit and made their way through the heavy foliage, careful to leave as little of a trail as possible while maximizing on speed.

"What's this?" The first figure got sidetracked with a mark on a tree. Kneeling besides the tree trunk, he called to his other two partners. "Hey, Deunan, Tereus, get over here and look at this."

"What is it Briareos?" came the female voice. She knelt carefully next to her partner and analyzed the markings on the tree quickly but thoroughly.

Deep gouges bit into the very heart of the tree, while lighter scrapes decorated the surrounding area with a distinct pattern. "Looks like a serrated hunting knife. Probably an antique, seeing as how those things aren't made like that anymore." the female voice said. The final voice spoke up from behind the duo.

"My question is, who was using it?" the third voice called from behind the two. The female turned around.

"What do you mean Tereus?"

"He means, Deunan," Briareos said, easily making the same connections his clone had, "that this wasn't done with a landmate. The knife marks are too small and too low down for the machine to make if it was made in the heat of battle, and there aren't any other marks of battle around; but they're deep, meaning whoever did this is either an insanely strong human or bioroid, or a cyborg."

"Right," Tereus agreed. Deunan hissed in annoyance.

"Probably a cyborg. Great. Probably all tricked out too," she groused as she got up and looked due east. Just their luck. Frankly, Deunan had had a lifetime's worth of homicidal cyborgs crammed into the past year. Halcon was bad enough, and they all nearly died that time. She was not eager to get mixed up with another. "Come on then boys; let's go meet our new friend."

Both males nodded and followed as Deunan took point and charged through the trees. After all, even if they weren't right and it was a human or bioroid, they wouldn't have already known of the trio's presence yet, so no sense in letting themselves get spotted. Despite the fact that you just can't miss three huge landmates falling out of the sky. So much for stealth.

Deunan Knute, ESWAT hostage rescue operative at 34 years old, kept her eyes on her panoramic projection screens inside her personalized landmate, her short-cropped blond hair held back by her headband that doubled as a comlink and vision goggles. She urged her landmate into a faster pace, despite all the trees and branches in her way. To her left, her cyborg partner and lover Briareos, age 43 ESWAT wingman, was hot on her trail, his mechanical side giving him the advantage of eight eyes instead of just two. He used one of his landmate's arms to push a large fallen tree out of their way to save time and keep them under the cover of the trees. And behind him, Briareos' bioroid clone Tereus took care of watching their six. Nothing ever riled that man, ever, so it would make a weird but valid kind of sense that he watched their back, as nothing could ever really surprise him. He may have only technically been a year old chronologically, but his 26 year old body kept up easily with her and Briareos as her other ESWAT wingman.

"Who do you think is doing all of this?" Deunan asked through the private line all three shared. "I mean what could have been on all of those carriers that one person would want so badly? And why would they have to go through all the trouble to make the entire craft disappear? And-"

"Easy Deunan," Tereus said as he pushed his landmate off of the ground to avoid a small gorge in the landscape. "We'll get our answers later, if all goes to plan."

"Worst comes to worst, you'll get a good fight either way, you hellcat," Briareos mocked. Deunan scowled at her monitors inside the cockpit, wishing she could stick her tongue out at her partners for them to see. But no matter, at the moment the hardest job for her was maneuvering her two ton landmate through this maze of trees.

Ten minutes later the three teammates came upon a tree line to see a fully operational and high-tech center. One second they were looking at nothing but dense underbrush, the next they could see bright lights everywhere. At least three stories towered up towards the treetops, and everything was lit up like it was one big LED lamp. Even from over a hundred meters back, the team could make out the insanely expensive security system hidden in the innocent-looking twenty-foot-tall barbed wire fence, which was probably crawling with electricity should someone decide to try and climb it.

"Shit, that was probably a holographic cloaking grid we just crossed," Deunan said.

"Yeah," Briareos agreed. "We probably just tripped a bunch of sensors. Let's be careful from here on in."

Tereus took this chance to update their team leader about this. Lord knew, it was things like this that could make Lance call off the entire mission if he deemed it too dangerous. "117 to HQ, status update. We're assuming that there is at least one cyborg on the island, and have come across a military-grade facility with impressive protection, approximately 165000 square feet and extremely well lit. We didn't even notice it as we were coming in, meaning they have a cloaking device powerful enough to hide all of it and we went through it on our way over. If they're smart at all, they would have equipped it with an alarm for when the cloak barrier was breached. Do we attempt to infiltrate?" Tereus gave their current situation back to Headquarters.

 _"Can you gather anything of use from your current position?"_ Lance asked, seriousness dripping from his voice.

Tereus looked over at his teammates, not at all surprised to see that Briareos was already wirelessly trying to hack into the place's mainframe, his Hecatonchires cyborg systems manipulating not only himself and his landmate but breaking into the highly fortified camp. After a minute, however, he came up out of his hacking attempts and shook his head.

"Negative, HQ. They apparently have a system firewall or an anti-hacking signal around the compound strong enough to keep 113 from reaching any important data without risk of compromising himself."

"109 to HQ, can't we just fly in and take over the system?" Deunan all but whined.

 _"Negative, 109. Even if your presence is known to be on the island, maintain as much stealth as you can. We need this info, yes, but we also don't need a mini war with whoever is living there, and we definitely don't need any of you captured or dead. Dismount and proceed on foot with the cloaking shield Yoshitsune gave you."_ Lance sounded like he wanted to pull his hair out because of how many times he had to deal with Deunan's impulsiveness. Said woman huffed at her superior but said no more.

"Copy," all three said at once as they all dismounted from their landmates.

Deunan sighed again and grabbed her Bobson automatic pistol and Colt M1911 handgun, holstering them on her thighs before slinging her Gong over her shoulder and strapping on a belt with extra magazines for each onto her hips. Grabbing her cloaking patch last, she slapped it onto her chest and turned to her two wingmen, who were also armed and ready to go. Well, she assumed they were, as they bad both donned their cloaking patches as well. Deunan took a deep breath and relaxed her body. Time to get serious.

* * *

So. What'cha think?

Again, first chapter, so nothing too terribly important has happened yet. But in a chapter or two it'll pick up, I promise.

Chronologically, this takes place after Ex Machina, about a year or two later, but I am taking some elements from the anime and the manga. None of those I own, by the way.

Remember, I'm open to chat with all the time. Meanwhile, like, favorite, and review me!

Take care!


	2. Rescue

**Update: April 10th, 2016**

So I finished editing this chapter, so I'm going to get this out of the way now. Again, no cameos yet. The plot starts in another chapter, but you get a bit of the background here. So as to not keep you any longer, I will proceed with the disclaimer.

Oh, before I do that, if you happen across any of my other stories, note that the completed ones are not going to be touched. The incomplete ones are going to be rewritten and finished along with this story. Now on to the disclaimer.

Disclaimer: я не являюсь владельцем Яблочное (phonetic pronounciation: ya ne yavlyayus' vladel'tsem Yablochnoye) (Russian)

* * *

Deunan switched back to her team's personal line and got their attention.

"Do we use our x-ray scope? At least then we can see each other while we navigate the compound," she asked.

"Not yet," Briareos answered. "We don't know how long we'll be in there, so best save it for when we most need it."

"Alright, well then I can see a huge boulder right to my left, about seventy feet away, dead east. I can get into the trees from there and make my way over to the top of the fence about two minutes further, because the tree line is closer to the fence over there. We can all just hop over without running the risk of touching an electric current running through the wire."

"Gotcha," came Tereus. "I'll stay to your eight-"

"And I'll stay to your four," Briareos finished. Deunan couldn't help but giggle at their twin-like quirks. It was just too funny! Even in this mission alone, they already finished each other's sentences, moved at the same time, and thought alike. She paused a moment, thinking on how Tereus inherited not only Briareos' looks prior to his re-commission as a cyborg, but also some of his old habits and intuition. It was almost as if the two of them shared a brain, and between them had a human brain, cyborg AI unit, and the repressed emotions of a bioroid. The complete package. She was damned lucky to have the two of them watching her back.

"Alright girl," Briareos warned, noticing her slight change in demeanor from her silence. "Time to go. Let us know when we're clear to follow you."

"Right," Deunan said as she jumped to the top of the boulder and used it as a launch point into the thick branches of the trees. She continued for a few seconds before sending her boys an "all clear, I'm headed due east-southeast," and taking off in that direction, jumping and swinging from branch to branch. Soon enough she heard Briareos to her right and Tereus to her left, both a bit behind for fear of running her over. They were following her solely by the noise she was making, so she gave them a break and hit a few leaves along the way in order to mark her path out. Eventually, the tree line overlapped with the fencing, which was so alive with electricity they could smell it as they passed.

"Bri, you okay? That didn't mess with your sensors did it?" Deunan asked as the three of them landed on a white concrete floor on the opposite side of the fence. From where they were, even if they weren't in camo mode, no one could see them without being spotted first. No windows or security cameras graced what appeared to be the back wall of the compound.

"Nah, I'm tight. Let's keep going," he responded. All three of them put on their goggles and triggered the night vision/x-ray/heat sensor lenses, finally letting them see each other, in a sense. From here on in, they would communicate via hand signals or low whispers, if they could afford it. Briareos had the luxury of sending text messages in lieu of verbal or physical communication with little more than a thought thanks to his AI unit. Deunan motioned towards a sliding glass door with a sensor pad to its left. Briareos nodded and headed straight for the pad while Deunan and Tereus covered him.

Briareos took one of his auxiliary chords from the nest of them at the back of his neck and hooked himself up into the keypad, searching for the correct access code to trigger the unlock sequence. A multitude of number sets slid across his field of vision before the door slid open with a soft whisper and they slipped in, Deunan taking point again. They found themselves in a long white corridor with multiple doors to either side, branching hallways placed seemingly at random or at convenience. Using their goggles, they knew to avoid certain rooms with heat signatures and which rooms to duck into on the off chance someone came down the hall. But for now, with the hallway empty, they took the chance to send in a status again.

"113 to HQ, we're inside the facility. Any particular moves you want us to make?" Briareos checked in, but got nothing but static. "113 to HQ, do you read?" he tried again before cursing when he got more static. "Damnit, there's a jamming signal. We have no backup, you two, keep an eye out."

"Rodger," came two quiet replies. Deunan carefully took a step forward, then another, and another, before walking down the hall, checking empty rooms and hallways with Bri and Tereus on her tail. It took her seven doors before she stumbled into the gold mine of information.

It was a computer lab, about the size of a large bedroom, with the walls absolutely covered with all types of charts and maps, diagrams and notes, all overlapping one another, making a rather interesting wallpaper. A large table sat in the very center of the room, with more of the same littered across its expansive top. The computers were placed on the perimeter of the room, making an inverted U surrounding the table, in two lines. Multiple printers were shoved in the corners next to file cabinets and boxes of what one could only assume were more papers.

"Bri, get your ass in here and plug into one of these computers. Try to override them so we can get the fuck out of here," Deunan said as she started taking pictures of the information on the desk while Tereus stayed by the door as lookout. Deunan registered the heat of her lover come up beside her and do just what she said, but paid him no more attention than that.

"What the…" Deunan murmured to herself as she paused to read some of the info she was capturing. "Guys, these are notes on bio-molecular structure. Basic composition of human anatomy." She temporarily deactivated her cloaking patch and flipped through some of the pages. "And nanobot technology?"

Both Tereus and Briareos followed her lead and deactivated their patches as well. Tereus looked over to the wall to his left and started back in surprise. "Over here are performance records. Lots of them. But seven are far superior to all the others. Whoever they are, they're on our level."

By now Briareos had hacked into the main computer and was giving them some details.

"Looks like the place is a super-secret research facility, run by a Dr. Circe Marklon? Apparently a bio-medical and bio-technical major, PhD, started in extreme cyborg re-commissioning right out of med school in Olympus. She joined after you and I came, Deunan, and was famous for her precise work with creating and repairing cyborgs. She used to work with that fucker Kestner, but left the program and went off the medical grid years before the Halcon incident. For some reason she packed up and left Olympus after and-"

Both Tereus and Deunan looked over at him.

"And what?" Tereus asked.

"I don't know. It just cuts off there. I can't find any more data on her."

"Well, try to find all those missing crafts," Deunan said. "Let's get that out of the way now."

"Already on it. Yeah, they were shot down and brought in here, all 23 crafts. A whole lot of high tech stuff too. Probably why they asked for ESWAT to step in. This is like the stuff needed to make cyborgs and machines, which would explain all the random notes you two found."

"Well that answers my earlier question," Deunan said, referring to the inquiries she had made at the start of this mission. "But why go through all the trouble of stealing all of this stuff instead of going through the legal methods?"

"My guess," interjected Tereus, "is that whatever they were doing wouldn't pass most international transport protocols. How many cyborgs can they make with the stolen tech, Briareos?"

"A lot of them, according to the majority of the manifests. There should have been enough parts to make at least thirty cyborgs."

Deunan scoffed. "Yeah, that definitely wouldn't fly with Athena. She'd have had this place shut down ages ago if she knew what was going on here."

"They're trying to make an army of cyborgs?" Tereus asked. "Why?"

"It'll be easier for them to control personally handmade cyborgs is my guess. Why recruit someone who might turn on you when you can make one with all the back doors and self-destruct codes you could ever need?" Briareos muttered.

"Christ, you're such a cynic," Deunan groused. Just then, murmurs entered the main hallway. All three team members looked toward the closed door they were behind; both Deunan and Tereus readied their guns quickly and aimed for the door. The voice of a harried young man carried through as he stopped in front of the room they were in.

"…yes, but then we would have to re-calibrate her entire system from the ground up, Circe. It would take a week before she would regain consciousness, another month before she could leave the bed. And that's _if_ she survives another overhaul."

"What are they talking about Bri?" Deunan hissed at her partner, never taking here eyes off of the closed door.

"I'm looking…got it. They have a girl here, about 21, some advanced form of cyborg. No name, no family history, nothing else really other than she's a 21-year-old special cyborg girl."

"I don't care, Charles, don't you see?" came a second feminine voice from outside. "She's survived this much, we can't stop now. We're on the edge of success! Go now and prep her in the stasis tank. We start the procedure tonight. And she doesn't leave until the _entire_ procedure is completed."

Briareos continued in a softer whisper as the two voices continued to argue loudly outside, confident the comlink could pick his voice up. "She was seven when they first started working on her, despite her being perfectly healthy-"

"They _what?!"_ Deunan spun around to glare at Briareos and snarled. How could they put a child through cybernetic grafting at seven?! And she had absolutely no reason to be changed in the first place? Tereus kept his focus on the door, but put a placating hand on her shoulder, spinning her back to the door as well at the same time.

"Deunan, cool it," he hissed at her. "We can't get caught, remember?"

Briareos kept talking. "Hold on, looks like the girl wasn't originally from here. Something about bringing her in from the badlands. They must have brought her in somehow."

The first male voice outside positively _screamed_ at Circe. "But this could kill the girl Circe! All these years, all the hard work, all of the failures culminated in this _one_ girl! If we lose here, we'd be right back at square one, and we would have to go through _another_ whole batch of children -"

"They're turning her into some kind of war machine, meant _s-agh!"_ Briareos quickly disconnected from the computer and put a hand to his head, shaking off a wave of fuzziness. His visuals cut in and out as his antivirus programming tried to fight off the invading self-defense program he had run into.

Now Tereus and Deunan both turned to the third member of their party, both worried about their friend and that whoever was outside might have heard him.

"Bri? Bri, you okay?" Deunan asked.

"Circe! There's been a security breach from the east side of the compound!" a third male voice came down the hall, interrupting the two arguing outside their door.

"Someone's hacked into the system, Circe! Unauthorized access to level ten sensitive documents," another female came from the other end of the hall.

Briareos got up and pulled out his gun. "Yeah, fine. The info was being erased as I was looking through it. They know we're here."

An aggravated sigh reached through the door. "I don't have time for this bullshit," the second voice, Circe, muttered. "You! Go and find the intruders and have them brought to the G2 Interrogation rooms. If there's more than one, separate them as far as you can." The second male voice offered a 'right away ma'am,' and disappeared from the hall as Circe continued to bark out orders. "You, triple the security on the backup files and erase the corrupted files." The second female voice offered a hurried 'yes ma'am,' and rushed past the door. "And _you,"_ Circe continued in a venomous tone, "come with me. We are going to begin preparations for the operation _immediately."_

The voices receded down the far end of the hall and were long gone before the three could breathe easy again.

"Crap, this is a mess," Briareos said as he checked for system damages. "That nearly cost me my antivirus program."

"Sorry, Briareos," Tereus said.

"You two do realize that we need to get that girl out of here," Deunan pulled them back to more urgent matters.

"Not a rat's chance in hell," Tereus snapped. "If she's a cyborg and has had upgrades since she was fucking _seven,_ she's probably so far out of our league that we couldn't hope to compare. Not to mention the fact that she was practically raised here, in this hellhole. She's going to be a danger and a complication that we don't need if we want to get out of here in one piece."

Briareos considered his girlfriend for a moment. He, of course, knew Tereus was logically correct. However, he also knew from experience that she was not going to give up this fight easily. There was just something about Deunan; she just had to step in to help a victimized person, the only exception being if that victimized person was voluntarily trying to destroy what she loved. "Deunan," he started, "if there's even the _slightest_ chance that we get her out of here, what's to say she won't just turn on us and attack us while we're in the air? Or what if she got loose? Are you really prepared to take responsibility if we manage to let a killing machine loose on the world?"

"Yeah, but…" Deunan started. How could they just leave the girl here? She didn't ask to be changed, after all. She turned to the other member of her team. "Tereus, we can't just leave her. We just can't. This isn't any life for anyone. And we, of all people, would know how hard it is to live in this world when you're only being used as a tool."

Deunan glared at her two partners, her resolve strengthened as she remembered how her father pushed her to become a fighter. Sure, he was an asshole at times, but he did it out of love. This girl didn't have that luxury. She was being used to kill solely for the whims of others.

"I am an ESWAT hostage rescuer, and you two are my wingmen. So I am rescuing this hostage and you two are backing me up. We clear?"

Both Briareos and Tereus looked at the petite woman in front of them, then at each other. This girl was something else, she really was.

"You do realize, of course, that with no way to talk to HQ, we can't exactly say we had a justifiable reason to take her with us," Briareos said.

"We do if she was the one shooting all those planes and ships down," Deunan shot back with a hand on her hip.

Tereus sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He had the feeling he was going to regret agreeing to this. "Okay, okay, let's get her."

"Glad you see it my way," Deunan said with a smirk. "The sooner we get her, the better off all of us will be."

"Yeah," Briareos nodded. "If they try a full system reset now, especially with the amount of high tech that girl has on her, she very well could end up dead in the middle of whatever procedure they have lined up for her."

"Alright then, let's go," Tereus said, nodding towards the door.

All three re-activated their cloaking patches and Deunan checked the hall before bolting down a different hallway than the two sets of voices.

"Briareos did you happen across where they keep her?" she asked.

"Yeah, fourth floor down, room all the way at the end of the compound, north side."

"Crap," Deunan cursed. "Couldn't have been farther from the landmates if they tried, huh."

"Elevator shaft to our left," Tereus said a second later. Deunan put the silencer on her Gong and shot the control panel while Briareos forced open the doors, letting his two partners grasp the cables and slide down four floors first before following along the wall and forcing open the door again.

"Move it you two, she's to your right. I'll keep the escape route clear," he ordered.

"Gotcha," Tereus said as he swung himself out of the shaft, Deunan hot on his tail. Briareos would hold the door open until they got back, unless someone came. In which case, he would let the doors close and keep hidden until it was safe to come out again.

Deunan shot ahead of Tereus as he swept the floor with his heat sensing goggles. True to Briareos' word, there was a door right at the end of the North hallway with a keypad. Deunan slung her Gong back over her shoulder and took out a PA unit and hooked it up to the door panel.

"I'm going to hack in and override the door and security alarm, so it'll just look like someone came to get her. You need to get her out in two minutes before I lose the connection, got it? I'm generally crap at this stuff, but I can manage that much," she said as she unscrewed the top of the keypad and pulled wires out from the top of the PA unit, hooking them into the system controlling the door. She started furiously typing on the PA unit, unconsciously biting her lip.

"Got it," Tereus said, still watching Deunan's back and wishing they had at least a little bit of backup instead of each of them splitting up. It bothered him to leave one of his teammates behind without someone to watch his six, even if that teammate had eight friggin' eyes and the single most advanced AI unit he's ever seen. But to leave Deunan open really but him off balance. Between him and Briareos, at least one of them always looked out for her. But in this case, he couldn't switch places with her, if only because he was worse with electronics than Deunan claimed to be.

"You're up," Deunan said, typing away at the PA unit, making the doors slide open for him. Tereus nodded and jogged into the room.

* * *

I just realized that the cameo game will only work if people review during the time that I'm uploading chapters. If this story is already completed when you find it and you still want to play, the rules are the same. If you want your request/prize announced, I will happily update the chapters to add your name in.

Anyway, this is the start of the mission. My OC will be appearing next chapter, and I'm going to be honest. I based her appearance off of my actual appearance. Her attitude is almost exactly opposite mine though. Anyway, until next time, like, follow, and review me! Stay safe!


	3. Escape

**Update: April 11th, 2016**

I need to slow down with the updates, really. Any faster and I'll run through all my chapters in no time.

Anyway.

Hello again, and welcome back to _Partners!_ My OC is introduced today, so I hope you like her. I will eventually post a picture of her on my Deviantart account, but as of yet, she isn't finished.

You can probably guess that my OC is going to be the main female in this particular story, so eventually everything will switch to her point of view, with a few chapters flipping to Tereus, maybe even a few other characters' perspectives. Just keep in mind that in this story, everyone only sees what they see and knows what they know - which is probably going to be a lot less than the reader knows.

In any case, on to the disclaimer!

Disclaimer: δεν είμαι κύριος Appleseed (phonetic pronounciation: den eímai kýrios Appleseed) (Greek)

* * *

Tereus skidded to a stop just past the doorway and inspected his surroundings. The standard-sized room was rather spacious, if only because it was empty of anything personal. The only adornments to the solid white room were a bed with pristine white sheets over a mattress in a steel frame, a closet with a solid white door and steel handle, and a nightstand also painted white. No window, as they were underground, but no TV, no computer, no books, nothing. It was like no one lived here at all.

And no 21-year-old girl.

"Briareos, you sure this girl's room is at the end of the north wing, fourth floor down?" Tereus asked. His response was a text message; Briareos was using his AI to communicate probably because he was in a position where he couldn't talk without risk of being caught. The message appeared on the lower left of Tereus and Deunan's vision screens, overlapping with the visuals.

 _113: Yeah, she's there. I can sense a cyborg at your location. But something feels off about her. Be on your toes._

Deunan was the one to ask, her voice coming through clearly over the comlinks. "Bri, what's going on at your end?"

 _113: I'm okay; there are a lot of patrols on the grounds now. Our forced entry and hacking set them all off, remember? Be careful you two, and hurry this up. Our patches won't last more than fifteen minutes, max._

Tereus had just finished reading over Briareos' message when his entire body tensed up. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and he practically felt the adrenaline dump into his body. Something wasn't right.

Sheer instinct made him dodge to the right as a dart with some clear liquid flew by where the back of his neck had just been. Rolling and springing to his feet, Tereus spun around and readied his gun.

There, perched on top of the doorjamb, was his target. She was pretty, he decided, as he took in her lean figure balanced on that half-inch perch. Mocha skin, long hip-length hair was pulled back into a sloppy braid hanging over her shoulder with bangs framing her exotic face, tribal tattoos that pulsed and spun to an inaudible beat on her temple and arms and legs, and no other blow darts as far as he could see. She was dressed in a skintight black one piece suit, shorts ending mid-thigh and the top a simple tank.

"Who are you?" she asked, steely eyes cold and calculating, staring straight at him. But how was that possible? He was still invisible to everyone but people with x-ray or infrared scopes. As she spoke, Tereus caught a look at razor sharp teeth and wicked nails. He guessed that those were probably modified too, and not just for show.

"I'm a friend, and I'm trying to get you out of here," he moved and spoke slowly so as not to make too much noise and rile her up even further. Her black eyes followed his every step.

"I don't need, nor do I want, your help."

"Really. Then I suppose you intend to let the psychos out there take you in for a full-body work over?" Tereus thought he understood what Briareos meant when he said she was different. Something was… off about this girl. And until he figured it out, he needed to stall.

"Tereus, hurry that up. You have a minute left before you're both locked in," Deunan hissed at him. Tereus grit his teeth as he continued to stare at the girl. There just wasn't enough time to do anything right now. He needed to coax her out of this room, and then he could take care of his paranoia later.

"Listen," he said to the girl. "My team is ready and waiting to get you out of here, and then you can decide what you want to do from then on. But right now, just humor me?" He of course left out the part that while she may decide what she wants to do, it may or may not happen. But he had a feeling that she knew anyway.

The girl tensed for a fraction of a second before she sprung off of the tiny doorjamb ledge, back flipped, and stood straight. "I know about your friend outside my door. An impressive job hacking in, might I add, for someone who claims to be 'generally crap at this stuff'. And I know your other friend is waiting at the elevator shaft, avoiding a patrol of guards," she said right into the team's private comlink. All three started.

"How did you get onto this frequency without us knowing? And how did you know our positions?" demanded Briareos.

And that's when it hit Tereus. "Where's your metal? You're supposed to be a cyborg." Because as far as he could tell, the girl had no inorganic parts grafted to her flesh. None of his scopes, not even his x-ray, could pick up a trace of metal. But Briareos said he sensed a cyborg over here…

"Tereus, twenty seconds!" Deunan called.

The girl just continued to stare straight at Tereus. He kept her gaze steadily, both coiled tight as springs as they tried to read each other.

"Are you truly a cyborg, or do I just have the wrong girl?" Tereus asked.

"That is for me to know and you to attempt to find out," the girl answered.

"Ten seconds!" Deunan called from the hallway.

Finally the girl backed up towards the door. "Fine. I will go with you. You seem to have no ill will."

Tereus barely had the time to breathe a sigh of relief before he darted through the closing door after the girl. As soon as he was out, Deunan disconnected her PA and pocketed it. She sprang to her feet and grabbed her Gong. The other girl seemed completely unfazed, however, and simply took in the bright white hallways.

"Follow me. We should pick up a few things before we leave the compound."

Both Tereus and Deunan frowned. Follow a potential enemy through home territory? Did she think they were completely stupid? But it was Briareos who made the decision for them.

"Go with her," he said. "For the time being, she's the most knowledgeable of all of us, even with our scopes. We have to trust her."

"Alright, if you're sure," Deunan said, following the girl, who had headed down the corridor and down another two flights of stairs. Tereus tailed them both, watching their six. By the time the girl stopped, they were six floors underground.

"Here," the girl mumbled to herself, standing in front of a door. She punched in a code, and the door opened up easily for her, leading into a pool of tar-black. "Come in and pick out a set for yourselves and your other friend," she called out as she stepped into the tar and nearly disappeared. Both Tereus and Deunan hesitated for a second before entering. Once they did, the door slid shut behind them. The lights turned the pitch black into more dazzling white, blinding the human and bioroid for a moment. Yet when they looked up, the girl was inspecting a wall covered in firearms as if the sudden change in lighting didn't affect her.

"Do you need to restock on bullets?" she asked, not looking away from the wall in front of her and gesturing to the back wall as she picked up two Seburo Compact-eXploders and their thigh holsters along with four magazine clips from the back wall. Setting them all on a table in the middle of the room, she moved next to grab a belt of squibs and a few tiny metallic tubes. She debated a moment more before grabbing a Seburo M-23 as well as two of its magazines.

"Even if you don't want to restock on the bullets, a least take a sneak suit," she said to them as she walked to the opposite wall from where she started. On that wall there was a series of shelves with what looked like small black balls the size of a fist. The girl grabbed one and broke it apart, right down the middle, and the ball exploded around her, clinging to her skin and effectively turning her into a dense black shadow. Grabbing three more, she tossed two of them to Deunan and Tereus, even though they still had their sneak suits activated.

"Here. It's a smart polyester mesh coated in zinc, black, and nickel over copper, and covered in scales smaller than those of a butterfly's. It reacts to your thoughts, voice commands, or trigger combinations from your fingers. Watch. _Camouflage."_

Deunan and Tereus watched in astonishment as the black suit rippled and…then she was gone. But their heat sensors said she was still right there in front of them.

"Amazing," Deunan breathed as she deactivated her sneak suit and walked closer to the other female. As she circled around, she realized that the suit would only camouflage the area that could potentially be seen, in the girl's case, her front. Suddenly the entire suit went back to pitch black and she pointed to the one Deunan had in her hand. "Go ahead. Try it on. Just vocally tell it to go under your original suit so you can still get to your weapons."

Deunan looked at the little ball in her hand a second before letting her Gong hang by its strap. Taking a deep breath, she whispered the easy command to the black sphere and cracked it open. It surprisingly gave way easily, almost as if she were breaking a ball of clay in half. The next second, the black was all over her, seeping in through the kinks and tiny gaps in her ESWAT standard armor, momentarily blinding her. She could hear Tereus issue the same command to his suit. When her vision cleared, she could barely feel the air-light cloth practically clinging to her skin. This was an amazing piece of technology, Deunan noted as she tested her reflexes and reaction times with the added layer. It was like nothing had changed. The new suit didn't hinder her in any way; rather, it helped her move and cooled her down inside her stuffy ESWAT suit.

The girl, meanwhile, was loading herself down with weapons and gadgets. Everything she put on the table was strapped onto her somehow, and what couldn't be clipped or strapped on was put into little pockets created when the girl pinched a seemingly random spot on the black suit.

"You three going to hurry this up?" Briareos hissed at them. "We haven't got all night, you know."

"Yeah, we're coming Bri," Deunan answered as she nodded towards the door. Tereus was already there, checking both ends of the hall. The girl grabbed one more thing, an old katana, and slipped its sheathe over her shoulder. The old sword hung diagonally from her left hip to right shoulder, same as if she were wearing a long-range gun. Finally she ran past Tereus and down towards Briareos in the elevator shaft.

"A Hecatonchires AI unit? Used to create a cyborg? Impressive. I was told that none could adapt to them, as they were too much for any one person to handle," she said upon seeing Deunan's boyfriend.

"Yeah, well this AI unit is more than a little paranoid that this is too easy of an escape. Let's go you three." Briareos had pulled the cables of the elevator car to create a platform for them to travel up on, instead of climbing back up.

"Let me," the girl said, grabbing the cables with her covered hands.

"No offense," Briareos started, "but I don't think you can handle lifting this thing."

The girl simply ignored the cyborg and started pulling on the thick cables. The gears groaned in protest to the force, but eventually complied. The three ESWAT members stared at the girl as she forced the 2500+ lb. car to climb the six stories to the ground level without so much as straining herself.

"That's not possible…" Briareos murmured. "Even I had trouble lowering the damned thing. It would be twice as hard to raise it up again, and she's half my size."

"My systems were designed to draw energy from outside sources and utilize that energy instead of expending my own," the girl said as they reached their stop. "If you could open up the doors?"

That shook Briareos out of his stupor. A little more wary of the newcomer, he did as he was bid and forced open the first floor doors again, letting Tereus and Deunan through before flipping himself through and holding it open for her. She didn't even glance over her shoulder, but instead pushed off the top of the elevator car and rolled through the elevator doors as the car fell back down the shaft.

"Where is your transportation?" she asked as she picked herself up off of the ground.

"Why don't we just show you," Tereus answered dryly, shooting the girl a look. The girl shrugged and gestured down the hall. Deunan took the lead, gun still at the ready, Tereus and the newcomer behind her, with Briareos in the rear. As a unit they all made their way back to the entrance they used almost an hour ago.

Briareos' sensors started going off rather urgently. "There's a squad coming this way-" he started.

"Yes, from the south wing. They won't intercept us before we reach the east exit, so they're going to try to shut down all entry and exit points and put the electrical dome over the compound. They hope to catch us as we leave," the girl finished, turning to face the south wing. She pulled out one of the tiny metallic tubes from her suit and opened it, shouldering her way past Briareos and Tereus. "Stay back, all of you, but especially the cyborg. This is the mechanical manifestation of hunger, and it stops for no one and nothing, save the emergency foam back at the armament room, or fire." And with that she popped the cap off the tube and let one tiny drop onto the floor before recapping it. The girl sighed and stood up, running past all three of the ESWAT teammates. "Let's go. You don't want to be here when that drop starts growing."

Deunan, Briareos, and Tereus didn't listen to her. They were too captivated by the tiny silver drop that the girl had left on the floor. It was barely larger than a coin, pulsing with its own heartbeat, shining like liquid mercury in the white light of the hallway. And then… it grew. Or expanded. Or spread out more. It was doing something in order to cover more area than it should have been able to cover.

Tereus took a step closer to take a look at the writhing mass. It _was…alive_ almost, and it kept expanding little by little, until…

A hole appeared, right in the middle of the silver puddle, and it grew as the silver mass spread out more. It was… _eating_ its way right through the floor. Though at least a foot of solid concrete, through the linoleum, through the metal support struts in the floor, and through the plaster ceiling of the floor below, until the hole was big enough to let Briareos fall through easily. And it kept getting bigger. The three took a hasty step back as the hole became a chasm, stretching from wall to wall.

"Holy shit…" Tereus heard Deunan mutter behind him as he watched the silver eat its way through the wall to his left. They hesitated a moment longer before darting after the girl, who merely glanced over her shoulder once Deunan caught up with her.

"Our transports are just outside the east of the compound," Deunan offered as they all turned a corner. The girl nodded and pulled out one of her larger squibs and lit it as they ran straight towards the already barricaded doors.

"Room to your left," she called out as she tossed the mini explosive and dove for the door she had mentioned. The other three followed her in right as the explosion rocked the compound, sending dust and debris all the way back down the hall and into the night. Tereus was the first to recover and glared at the girl.

"A little more warning next time, why don't you?" he ground out. Of all the nerve of that girl! She could have easily killed them all! And she had the nerve to _glare_ back at _him._

"And I suppose you had a better idea?" she challenged as she pulled herself off of the floor. Tereus scoffed and got up, pulling Deunan up with him.

"We need to get out, _now,"_ Briareos said. "Come on!"

* * *

So this is chapter three. As of now, she is known as 'the girl' until further notice. I'll post a character analysis a few chapters later, at the end, for you to get to know her a little better.

Wow. I really have nothing else to say other than the regular things.

Anywho.

Review, like, follow, share, and all that other good stuff!

Stay safe everyone!


	4. Redemption

**Update: April 14th, 2016**

New chapters abound! We get a new name for OC in this character, and the first cameo! I do happen to mention one place you can find this character, but there is another, much more contemporary reference. Guess it and you get a prize!

Personally, I don't really like the latter half of this chapter, only because that sort of stuff seems kind of _too_ happy-go-lucky. But Deunan really does act like this, and eventually does manage to make Briareos see her side and eventually agree with her.

But either way, I do hope that all of you like it!

Disclaimer: Aš neturiu savo Appleseed (Lithuanian)

* * *

Tereus glared into the thick white dust that had sprung up around the crater created by the little bomb, grateful that he had his vision scopes. Briareos and the girl were to his left, and Deunan was a bit behind him to his right. He covered his mouth and pressed on though the crater, the others finding their way out a second later than he, and they all streaked across the back of the compound towards the landmates.

"I'm wirelessly activating the landmates now so they're ready to go when we get there," Briareos said. _"You,_ missy, are riding with me," he continued to the new girl. She kept her focus on the high electric fence that surrounded the compound, but nodded to Briareos. She didn't even stop; she dashed right under the overhanging foliage and vaulted herself into the trees, clearing the fence in one leap. She grabbed a branch that hung parallel to the ground, and let her momentum swing her around. She let go as soon as she was vertical, and the next second, she was hanging upside down from the branch by her legs.

"Grab on. I'll swing you into the trees," she said. Deunan caught on first, dropping her Gong to hang by its strap again, and taking a running start to grab the girl's wrists. The girl caught Deunan easily, using the blonde's momentum to swing her up into the trees and out of sight.

"I'm good," she said into the comlink for her male teammates' sakes. "I'm heading on ahead, meet you all there."

"Deunan, wait-" Briareos started, but then cut himself off. There was no use in trying to tell her to come back or wait. That woman was a wildcat when she wanted to be. He sighed and copied his girlfriend's movements, ending up in the trees and chasing Deunan down. The girl hung from her knees again and gave Tereus a look.

"Come on, they're starting to raise the electrical dome," the girl urged Tereus.

Tereus just stared at her, wondering what in the nine levels of hell she was. How could a girl her size do anything she just did without any serious visual cyborg parts? What the heck was she?

"Tereus, _now!"_ Deunan called out into their comlink, voice as sharp as her blade. _That_ woke him up. Finally Tereus let himself be swung into the trees. He barely had to wait a second before the girl appeared on the tree limb next to his, and he led the girl back through the trees, toward the landmates. Ten minutes later, he dropped next to his landmate and quickly disarmed himself and resettled himself into the cockpit. He caught a glimpse of the girl jumping onto Briareos' landmate's back with her gun in hand.

"Magnetic, waist down," she said to no one in particular. Then to Briareos, "Does this mess with any of your systems?"

"Nope, you're good," Briareos said as he took off. The girl was stuck to the outer shell of the landmate, even though her hands weren't gripping anything. That's when Tereus realized that she had commanded the suit to stick herself to the back of the landmate from the waist down with an artificial magnetic force field, and was checking if the landmate was impaired because of it.

"Guys, we have company," Deunan said as an entire platoon of landmates took off from the rooftop of the compound.

"Fucking hell," Tereus cursed as he readied his gun.

"Don't shoot," the girl called from Briareos' back. "They can't see us, so no need to call attention to ourselves. Just stay below the tree line and make as little of a disturbance as possible."

"Are you sure they don't have scanners that can pick us up?" Briareos asked.

"Positive," she replied. "They used anything of value on their projects. Those are just landmates we got from the ships and planes that were taken out. Circe stripped them of anything valuable and used them on her creations; they aren't equipped for an actual pursuit, and the compound never had any guns big enough for those things to use either way. They were used to carry large loads."

"So quiet and invisible, huh?" Deunan chuckled wryly. "Not my style, but if it gets us out of here, I'll take it."

"117 to HQ, do you copy?" Tereus tried a check in with their team leader as all three took off towards their pickup point.

" _Copy, 117. Where the hell were you all? What's going on?_ " their team leader demanded.

"113 to HQ. Once we infiltrated the compound by foot our signal was jammed. We found out that all those missing planes and boats were shot down and brought into the facility. All 23 of them were carrying some cyborg parts," Briareos checked in, dodging a low-hanging branch. The newcomer on his back deftly detached herself from the back of his landmate and jumped over the branch, back flipping, and ending up right back where she started.

"109 to HQ," Deunan checked in last. "The facility is a research center base. We suspect that they're building an army of cyborgs for their own purposes. We also think that we have one of those cyborgs in our custody and are returning now."

" _You just_ love _taking souvenirs with you from every mission, don't you 109?_ " their team leader sighed. " _Alright, bring the cyborg you apprehended in. Anything else I should know?_ "

"Yeah," Deunan continued. "Apparently the defenses were high because their military power is minimal. They only have landmates, and none of them are equipped for pursuit or have firearms."

"Tell your HQ that I was one of the ones who shot down those carriers," the girl called from Briareos' back. "And that there are six other combat-ready cyborgs in stasis back at the lab. If I know my creator, she's going to send them all after me at one point or another."

All three ESWAT members looked over at the girl.

"That can't be possible," Briareos said. "I could sense you as the only cyborg presence on the island, aside from myself. Even if they were asleep or in stasis, I would have found them."

"Well then you would be correct, I suppose, if your definition of cyborg was strictly a sentient or conscious being, almost exclusively human in origin, that now relies on a great deal of machinery or unnatural devices to remain alive. These creatures weren't human to begin with. They were built from the ground up, unlike me. I was the only successful cyborg to come out of this place."

 _"What?"_ Tereus couldn't believe it. "I knew this would be trouble. 117 to HQ, we just found out that the cyborg hostage we have was one of seven who shot down those carriers, but the other six are really combat-ready machines. She is the only true cyborg on the island, aside from 113."

" _Damn it,_ " their team leader cursed. " _Make sure that hostage is secured, you three, and hurry back over here. She's going to be taken to the max-security isolation ward until we figure out what to do with her_."

"Copy," all three members stated just as they reached their designated pickup spot on the far west shore of the island.

"Where's the WASP?" Deunan asked, scanning the black skies for the huge aircraft.. But, of course, it was in camo mode, making it impossible for her to see it with her eyes.

"Coming in fast from your 3," Briareos said. His own sensors had picked up the secure radio signals that the other members of his team could not detect.

"Got it," she responded, taking off to meet the WASP, Briareos and Tereus following after her.

Once they were safe in the carrier and dismounted, all three stood around their hostage, who had disengaged herself from the back of Briareos' landmate and seated herself in the corner of the craft and was staring out the window.

"Well, now that we're out of the hot seat for the time being, why don't we introduce ourselves?" Briareos said, letting his hands hang loose at his sides after putting away his J9. He was probably banking on the fact that he could draw one of his smaller handguns in a second, though. Tereus wasn't that comfortable with a potential hostile a few feet away from him, though, and kept his own MN-23 in his hands. Deunan was the brave – or stupid – one to holster all her weapons and crossed her arms.

The girl sighed slightly, still looking outside, and leaned back into the seat. "My name is Artemis, and I am an Android-Cyborg hybrid."

"Android? What is that?" Deunan asked.

"A robot that looks like a human. That's what the other six units at the base are called. Androids One through Six. All those cyborg parts that were on those carriers weren't grafted to human flesh, but rather used to build their own humans from the ground up. I remember watching the tech teams working long into the night as a little girl."

"So the how are you an Android-Cyborg hybrid? You look as normal as any other human, but my sensors are still insisting that you're part machine," Briareos asked.

"I am cyborg in the sense that I am part machine and part human. I am android in the sense that I was rebuilt from the ground up. I am exactly half human and half machine, from all the way down to the cellular-molecular level. That is why I still look and feel human, but my strength, senses, and intellect rival that of your own, Briareos."

"So that Circe woman essentially had you broken to pieces and put together again with half nanobot technology? Is that what you're saying?" Tereus demanded.

"That's the less technical way to say it, yes," Artemis said. "Circe remade me to become a killing machine. She was meticulous in making me the perfect warrior, was the one who trained me, if not by her own hands." Artemis paused for a second. "The people on board those crafts were used to test my abilities."

"You did _what!?"_ Tereus hissed. "How many innocent people did you kill?!"

She was silent a long moment. The three man team stared at her as she hung her head and held incredibly still. If it wasn't for her shallow breathing, they would have thought she was dead. "Hundreds," Artemis finally whispered in a small voice. "Hundreds of people."

And that's when Deunan saw red. "How could you?! Every one of those people had lives to get back to! They all had a reason to live!" She was near livid, her hands automatically going for her knife at her back. And it would have ended up in Artemis's neck had both Briareos and Tereus not grabbed her forearms.

"If I didn't do it, Circe would have them killed anyway, and make them suffer as well! I found it more humane to give them a swift ending, as that was the only way they would ever leave the island," Artemis snapped back. "Believe me, if I had another option, I would have taken it. But she is a cunning woman, always insuring that she would win in the end," she ended in a whisper.

Artemis hung her head. ' _All those children she brought in… All so small and scared…I was the only one…the only one who lived…_ ' Her voice cracked as she spoke. "If I could have saved any of them, I would have, I swear to you. Circe…she is almost like the sorceress from whom she got her name from. Cold-blooded and ruthless, as well as smart and calculating. She could do anything she truly set her mind to, making the impossible extremely possible by any means necessary."

All three ESWAT members were silent, processing this information slowly. Deunan spoke next, her tone completely changed from before.

"So all these years you had upgrades and work-overs, gained all this power, saw and hated all the bloodshed, and you still stayed? Why?" Deunan asked, truly confused. Artemis rested her elbows on her knees and stared at her hands.

"I can imagine that you guessed why Circe decided to create her killing machines instead of recruiting them. It's easier that way. The same rule applies to me. With a single word, she could shut my body down. The word acts like a kill switch on the back of a landmate, freezing my body while sending extreme pain signals up to my brain. Whenever I tried to run or rebelled, she locked me in stasis for days, weeks, even two full months one time. After a while, I just stopped trying to get away, instead biding my time until she messed up."

"She really was using you," Deunan whispered.

"Yes, she thinks of me as her prize creation more than a living being," Artemis said as she tightened a fist, remembering all the years she spent as a killer. "I learned to act like they did in order to survive. I hoped and prayed for an opening, and you gave me that chance. I am indebted to you."

"Well that may be the case, but our captain back at HQ still thinks you to be armed and dangerous. Once we land, you are to be taken to the max-security isolation ward and held there until further notice," Tereus said in a clipped tone. "We still have to hold you accountable for the fact that you took innocent lives."

"I understand," Artemis said quietly. Tereus gave her a cold look and turned to walk off, Deunan and Briareos staring after him.

"He's doing the whole hard-ass cop act again," Deunan noted, comparing her other partner's actions to that of the night he confronted Hitomi during the Halcon incident. Her boyfriend hummed in agreement.

"You can't really blame him though, can you. He just isn't made to accept that kind of stuff," Briareos said. The PA system clicked on in the carrier, the pilot's voice coming though.

"Approaching landing pad at ESWAT Headquarters," came the pilot's voice from the small speakers. Deunan turned back to the morose woman in front of her.

"Don't mind Tereus. He means well, he just has a weird way of showing it. We all do, actually. This one besides me has the habit of knocking me out of windows and off high platforms to save my skin," Deunan ended in a laugh as Briareos gave her what she had dubbed 'The Look'.

"Yeah, well you seem to enjoy putting me into those positions by jumping into them headfirst without looking, girl," he countered. Deunan decided to hell with professionalism and stuck her tongue out at him, pouting like a child. Briareos laughed, putting a hand on her head and ruffling her hair.

"All right, enough. We need to get to Lance and check in," Briareos said after a moment. He turned to Artemis and offered a hand. Said woman barely lifted her head. "He may think you armed and dangerous, but I'm convinced you're a friend. We'll put in a defensive word for you," he said.

Artemis stared up at the pair in slight shock. "But why? What benefit would you gain from helping me?"

Deunan pretended to consider this deeply. "Well, aside from all the inside info we could get out of you about Circe, and your firepower on the battlefield, we get a new friend out of it." She gave Artemis a smile. "Now come on, let's not give Lance a reason to not like you."

Artemis looked at them a moment longer before taking Briareos' hand and letting his huge bulk pull her thin frame to her feet. With a new determination she looked her new comrades in the eye and gave them a steadfast nod.

 _'I will work to right the wrongdoings of my past.'_

* * *

Again, the ending kinda doesn't sit well with me, but that's keeping in character.

Speaking of, to explain Artemis' last statement. She's the kind of person that is logical and will always think of moral right and wrong. At this point, she understands that what she did is wrong, and what Circe and co. have done is wrong, but she isn't the type to offer help readily. She needs to _see_ that something is wrong, and then understand that it _really is_ wrong, before she helps.

Anyway, I digress.

Now, I will reveal the cameo of Circe! She can be found in Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. In this series, she turns men into guinea pigs and makes women beautiful and appreciated knowledge and magic and all that.

Artemis can also be found in Riordan's series, but barely there. She is Goddess of the Moon and of the Hunt, and has her own set of all-immortal-girl hunters. And in all honesty, I just chose the name for this OC because I happened to like the name Artemis.

Anyway, those are the big reveals! As usual, like, favorite, follow, and all of that good stuff! Until next time, stay safe!


	5. Tests

**Update: April 27, 2016**

So this has been a long time coming, but I've been working on editing No Ordinary Girl more than anything else these past few days, and it's taken a lot longer than I had intended, because creative bursts come and go with me. With that story in particular I've been adding in far more detail than the original chapters have provided, so it's almost as if I'm writing a whole new fanfiction. I've also been doing the same to Seamstress to Star, but that one requires less time for some reason.

But anyway, I digress.

This new chapter is pretty easy, not too long, and in Tereus' point of view for the most part. It may seem like the POV drifts into Artemis', but it's predominantly Tereus thinking. Past that, I will let you all continue on to the chapters!

Disclaimer: 私はアップルシード所有していません (phonetic pronounciation: Watashi wa appurushīdo shoyū shite imasen) (Japanese)

* * *

Tereus was waiting in the hallway leading out of the hanger, still fully geared up. His missions pack was at his feet, and he leaned against the steel grey walls with a glare etched on his face. He heard the WASP's airlock doors hiss open, and Deunan and Briareos stepped out of the WASP, the two of them flanking Artemis. He frowned and pinned the latter female with a cold stare as he waited for the group to reach him, and started walking to the debriefing room in front of them, effectively cutting the girl off from view.

Tereus heard his other partners' easy banter and nearly scoffed. They shouldn't be so relaxed around a killer, yet it seemed ad though they were all already buddy-buddy or whatever. Frankly, he didn't care how close the newcomer and the other two members of his team got; as far as he was concerned, she was a threat, she had to be held accountable for all the lives she took, and that was the end of the discussion.

Tereus kept his eyes trained firmly ahead of him, paying more attention to the sound of combat boots on steel and the bright fluorescent lights that gave everything a white-blue tinge. The group passes a few other officers and Deunan and Briareos gave easy greetings. But Tereus barely gave a terse nod in the direction of anyone who talked to him. They took the hint - this was still part of his mission, and he wasn't stopping for anyone or anything. It took ten minutes and a myriad of twists and turns, but finally they reached the debriefing room. Tereus punched a quick pass code into the key pad besides the hydraulic door and waited for the soft hiss of the door opening.

When the four of them entered the debriefing room in the heart of HQ, Lance, and surprisingly Prime Minister Athena and her assistant Nike all turned to greet them. Keeping their current formation, the three ESWAT members snapped to attention.

"Well, this is certainly a pretty surprise you brought us, officer 109," Athena commented dryly. Deunan at least had the grace to look a bit ruffled by the jab at her tendency to do what wasn't asked of her. Athena stepped around Tereus, who took the liberty of stepping to the side, and stared at Artemis long and hard, her ruby eyes cutting into Artemis's chocolate ones. "Well? Who is she?"

"I am called Artemis, ma'am," the aforementioned girl said. "I am a molecularly modified Android-Cyborg hybrid specifically designed to be unmatched in combat and intellectually."

Athena didn't show any sign of this being news to her, but if it was, it was hidden behind her poker face. "Is that so," she mused. "Lance tells me that you were once human, but remade from the ground up and trained to kill. And from what one of my officers tells me, you have superhuman abilities. Tell me, Artemis, how did you come to be what you say you are?"

Artemis looked down for a moment and took a deep breath, her tattoos spinning at dizzying speeds. "I do not clearly remember anything prior to waking up in my creator, Circe's, lab almost fourteen years ago. I was seven, I believe. My first memory is her hovering over me, my body feeling foreign and unnatural. I could sense things - so many different things I felt overwhelmed at once. She taught me how to use my new side to its fullest extent, physically and mentally." She paused for a breath, and Tereus could feel her tense behind him. Athena had by now moved to the large screen at the front of the room and was looking at what he guessed were the files that Briareos had managed to download before he was forced out of Circe's system. "I was the only child of twenty five that survived the transformation. All the others either died on the operating table or were put down because of defects that caused them to become too difficult to handle. After the twenty fifth child died, Circe began the Android project, about six years ago, using the cyborg parts on those crafts to build herself a fully mechanical army. I was the one who shot down those ships and planes, and I was the one who killed all of their crews."

By now, Artemis's voice had dwindled to a soft whisper. Athena still stared at the screen, impassive as could be. It was Lance that spoke next.

"You do realize that the number of lives on your hands easily breaks into the hundreds, do you not?" he asked Artemis. She in turn nodded slightly.

"Three hundred and eighty seven, to be exact, yes, I am aware."

Deunan, the softhearted fool, cut into the conversation. "Sir, I realize that it isn't my place to speak, and that what I say is as far removed from any semblance of human empathy as can be, but she wasn't given much choice. It was either her eliminate them as humanely as possible, or Circe would have, and she wouldn't have been nearly as forgiving from what I've seen and heard. Artemis was caught between a rock and a hard place, Sir, and she did what she could with the little freedom she had."

"Be that as it may, 109, the bottom line is that she took innocent lives, many of them falling under Olympus citizenship. We cannot allow her to just walk away form that without repercussion," Lance replied.

"Ma'am," Artemis began, addressing Athena, "I am fully prepared to atone for each and every life I have taken, as well as receive any additional punishment you deem appropriate for my past actions. All I ask is the opportunity to prove my intentions." At this, Artemis bowed her head in deference to the woman who now held her life in a red-nailed hand.

"Hmm." Athena looked over at the subservient female in the middle of the room, awaiting her judgment. "I believe that you speak the truth. Very well, here is your verdict. I am appointing you a constant guard and putting a tracker on you. You cannot make a single move without someone knowing exactly what you are doing. And I am giving you a month trial period during which you will serve under ESWAT jurisdiction. At the end of that month I will decide what will happen from there. You will relay all of your abilities and modifications to Commander Lance. Am I clear?"

"As crystal, ma'am, and thank you for your faith in me. I will strive to make sure it wasn't misplaced," Artemis bowed lower, fully aware that what she was given was much more than she deserved. Athena looked on the girl and nodded, turning to leave with Nike in tow. Lance turned to the three ESWAT members in the room and pinned them with a hard stare.

"Alright, you three, you heard the Prime Minister. I'm leaving Artemis in your care, so if anything happens that shouldn't happen, you're partly responsible. And you," he said, turning to Artemis, "are getting an implant chip, not a cuff. While I don't doubt that you would probably cut it out of your body anyway, this theoretically inclines the wearer to leave it in as opposed to risking a near-fatal wound. Now," he said, turning and walking toward the mechanics lab where Yoshitsune was undoubtedly waiting, "come so we can get you scanned through. And we need a list if all your mods."

Artemis nodded and followed Lance out the door, with Tereus, Deunan, and Briareos behind her. When they reached the lab, the two men broke off and stood in the corners adjacent to the door while Deunan kept near Artemis as she pulled at the collar of her sneak suit. The entire thing peeled off her skin, almost as if she were a snake molting for the season, leaving her in her original black one piece suit. Her tattoos were still pulsing and spinning to some inaudible beat as she placed the now spherical sneak suit on a tray. Artemis turned to Yoshitsune and asked, "Does my regular suit have to go too? It's just spandex and cotton."

Yoshitsune had slid out from underneath whatever project he was working on, his face hands and blue hair streaked with oil and grease, and was staring incredulously at the woman in front of him, not believing his eyes. Not that Tereus couldn't understand; this was something so far from normal that he figured that anyone would have trouble processing something like this. She in turn gave Yoshitsune a prodding look, waiting for his answer. "For a cyborg modification scan."

Yoshitsune blinked and shook off his bewilderment. "Ah, no, you can-"

"Yes, it comes off," Lance cut in. "And 113, start that list on her mods."

Briareos nodded and turned to Artemis. She held his gaze for a moment before turning and stripping down even further, leaving her in her black sports bra and matching cotton underwear. Climbing onto a CAT scan table, she started rattling off all of her improvements as the bed slowly slid into the scanning chamber.

"My bones have been replaced with a lightweight titanium mesh that's threaded through ceramic bones, making them all highly resistant to high pressures, heat, cold, and breakage. My muscles have the same fibers running through them, fortifying them as well. These fibers also allow for data to be transferred directly to my secondary AI unit, made to rival the Hecatonchires. It also allows for overlays in my eyes, ears, and jaw; they allow for communication, x-ray, night, infrared, and identification scopes as well as a zoom and underwater sight of six hundred fathoms. My hearing rivals that of any night predator's, and I can control the sensitivities of my senses at will, even up to feeling your heart beats from where I lay now or barely feeling an explosion within ten feet of my current position. My nails hold hydroponic needles, which could be used to hold any number of solutions, from a light sleeping potion to a lethal poison capable of killing in seconds. The needles are released by bending my fingers back at the first knuckle then extending the finger. My nails can also grow up to four feet at will, hardening to rival a diamond-tipped knife. There are nanobot implants in my blood that fight infection and counter poison as well as quickly repair damage to any part of my body, provided that I'm not missing a huge piece of me. However, all of these modifications need energy to run, so I draw energy from the surrounding environment and organisms. My tattoos are identification markers, and are synced to my heartbeat. And Commander? Have someone cut a square off the back of my neck, right above the third upper thoracic vertebrae. Circe's tracker is off for now, but once she activates it again she'll know where I am."

"That all?" Briareos asked, somewhat sarcastically.

"Aside from the fact that my AI learns during every battle, yes. But then again, I suppose you knew that, having an AI yourself," Artemis answered in the same mocking tone. Lance gave Artemis a flat look and turned to Tereus.

"117, get that chip off of her."

Tereus nodded and walked over to Artemis, picking up a surgical scalpel on the way. She sat up and turned her back to him, exposing the large flash tattoo across her shoulders. Pulling her long braid over her shoulder, she guided Tereus to the chip.

"You should be able to see a small light just under my skin. Use that as a guide to give you the outline of the chip. Take the point of the knife once you find it and cut it out."

"Won't you need anesthesia? At least locally?" Yoshitsune asked with a crease in his brow. Artemis gave him a small smile.

"I've survived a cut two and a half inches deep, from my left shoulder to my right hip, being sewn up without any. I'll be fine." Turning to Tereus a second, she gave him a nod and let him get to work.

Tereus, for all of his repressed emotions, was having trouble calming his mind down. It kind of went against his nature to just cut into a living person that wasn't attacking him. And her cooperativeness wasn't helping his nerves any. He would much rather her to act out of order and give him the excuse to lock her up with a valid reason. Yet he saw the logic in getting the chip out as soon as possible. Mentally rolling his eyes at himself, he looked for the microchip under Artemis's skin. And sure enough, there was a minuscule red light blinking right over her third upper thoracic vertebrae. He placed his fingertips over the light and pressed lightly. The chip was small, barely a full square centimeter, more than likely not even a millimeter thick. Keeping his finger on the chip, he gave Artemis a heads up.

"I'm going to cut the chip out now," he said as he opened the sterile sealing and adjusted his grip on the handle of the scalpel. Feeling more than seeing her nod, Artemis took a deep breath and braced her hands flat on the bed. Tereus slowly took the very point of the knife and pushed it gently into her skin, feeling it scrape against the edge of the microchip as it cleaved easily through flesh. Surprisingly, no blood welled up at the incision; rather, the skin around the cut merely heated up. He steadied his hand and slid the blade down slightly, following the edge of the offending piece of technology. Artemis, to her credit, didn't so much as flinch as the scalpel slid through her, so Tereus continued steadily around three sides of the chip before using the tip of the blade to flick the small piece of metal from under Artemis's skin, hearing it clink on the ground. As soon as it did, Artemis smoothed over the small piece of skin that had come up and held it there for all of a minute. When she removed her hand, the area was already scarring, knitting itself together again before his very eyes.

Artemis got up from the scanning bed and turned to Lance. "And the tracker chip?" she asked. Lance turned and held up a small chip almost identical to the one that was just cut out of her. Artemis mentally sighed to herself, slightly annoyed at how paranoid people could get. "How does it work?"

"Simple enough," Lance answered. "We place it on the back of your neck and it sinks into your skin, where it stays." Artemis nodded and turned her back to Tereus again, who had picked up a pair of tweezers as well as the new chip.

"The skin should have healed by now. Just place it where the old one was," she murmured to him. His hand went back to her neck, stroking and smoothing over the new flesh in wonder.

"You weren't kidding when you said you healed fast," he mumbled a bit begrudgingly. It took him another minute to open the packet with the tweezers and put the chip to her skin. In an instant Artemis became aware of a new piece of technology being absorbed by her body, its systems mixing and blending with hers. A moment later she sat up with a sigh. "And that's that," she whispered.

"Now Artemis, Prime Minister Athena wants you to be a temporary ESWAT operative. Your number will be 121, and you'll be working with 109's team, partnering with 117 for two-man missions. But before all of that, let's take a look at your stats and performance levels."

Artemis nodded yet again and addressed Briareos as she pulled her black suit back on and palmed her sneak suit.

"Did you happen to get any of my stats while you were in Circe's system?" she asked him. The cyborg shook his head.

"No, sorry. Even if I had known where they were I had a different objective at the time."

"Alright, fair enough. I just have to show you everything I know." She turned to Lance. "Where should I start? Hand-to-hand, shooting, critical analysis, forensics, computer hacking, retrieval, or landmate operation?"

Lance gave her a disbelieving look that said 'there is no way that you can do all of that and you're younger than Deunan', to which she laughed out loud to herself softly.

"Alright," she said, "hand to hand it is." She turned to Deunan. "Where's the training room here?"

Deunan, for her part, was internally smirking to herself. She was going to like this new chick, Tereus could almost smell it. This was going to end up being hell for Briareos and himself, he just knew it. "Come on," Deunan told Artemis as she walked out of the lab, "I'll show you." Artemis nodded and followed the other woman out of the lab.

* * *

And that's a wrap people!

I'm sitting here in my school, on a computer in the corner of the library, marveling at how easy it is to upload a chapter while it's so hard to write the same chapter. I spent a good four hours on this chapter alone, and it's taken me all of ten minuets to upload it to The speed of this astounds me.

But anyway, this is where we are. I have a general idea of where this story is going, but it might take a while before you see anything substantial. Maybe another four chapters or so. But I have the entire thing planned out in my mind, so clearly that I can see it.

So I will let you all continue on your merry way now. Like, favorite, review, and share, and most of all, stay safe everyone!


	6. Spar

**Update: May 1, 2016**

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

*ahem*

Yes, it is my day of birth today. I have turned 18, and am on my way to college. What a life. Damn.

Anyway.

So. This is another one of those updates because the chapter was already written. It's not that long, but that's okay. I promise I'm going back to Seamstress soon. I have an easy week coming up, so this shouldn't take too long. And this A/N is officially over.

Disclaimer: Јас не поседуваат Appleseed (Phonetic pronunciation: Jas ne poseduvaat Appleseed) (Macedonian)

* * *

Tereus heard a set of sure footsteps come up behind him, the thick soles of combat boots resounding loudly in the room. "Good job with that scalpel, Tereus," Lance said after the women left, finally using the bioroid's real name. Tereus inclined his head slightly in his superior's direction to indicate that he had heard, but didn't turn around or comment further.

"I realize that partnering you with a potential hostile isn't up your alley," Lance continued, completely unperturbed by Tereus' lack of response, "but I want you three to keep watch over her. Report anything strange she does." Lance paused for a moment, and Tereus finally turned to look at the older man.

Lance had a frown on his face, making the old man's smile lines stand out sharply and his eyebrows furl in frustration. "I'm not liking how level headed she is. She feels like the kind of person that would play along to her own ends."

"Understood, Commander," Tereus murmured while Briareos inclined his head in agreement from his station in the corner of the room. On an unheard cue both males turned and headed out towards the locker rooms to switch out of their combat gear and into their training suits. By the time they entered the training room, Deunan and Artemis had already changed and had started sparring.

"You crazy hellcat," Tereus heard Briareos sigh to himself over the muffled _whump_ of a body being slammed into the floor mats and the quick shower of absorbed punches and blocked kicks. Only Deunan could start a fight right after a mission. Shaking his head, Tereus walked right up to the edge of the ring that surrounded Deunan and Artemis to watch.

Artemis was a force to be reckoned with, Tereus decided as he watched the two women go at it. While she was stockier and stood almost a full head taller than the petite Deunan, Artemis was just as fast, and even more creative when it came to escaping from holds or traps. What really saved Deunan from losing within a matter of seconds was her unpredictability, her constant changes to her battle style. She had the mental fluidity and adaptive nature needed to keep her opponent guessing. As soon as Artemis had one of Deunan's strategies figured out, it would change and Artemis would have to spend time and energy trying to figure it out all over again while getting beat up until she _did_ figure it out.

"You do realize that if we don't stop them they'll just keep going until they both just drop from exhaustion, don't you?" Briareos whispered to Tereus. He in turn snorted slightly and gave a short nod.

"Yes, that does seem like the two of them. It seems as though Artemis is as qualified for hand-to-hand as any of us, if she can keep up with Deunan," Tereus observed as he watched Artemis catch one of Deunan's punches, switch her grip on the other's wrist, and pushed it down while jumping behind her opponent, aiming to trap the smaller woman's hand behind her in a hold. Deunan anticipated this as soon as Artemis went airborne, and spun around fast, loosing her arm and effectively dodging the hold. Deunan retaliated with a high kick that would have smashed her heel into Artemis' temple, had the other woman not caught the blonde's leg between her forearms. Artemis latched on to Deunan again and spun the other woman around in the air, effectively throwing the blonde to the ground. Briareos hummed in agreement.

"Should we stop them?" Tereus asked as he watched Deunan go to sweep Artemis' legs out from underneath her. Said brunette landed face-down on the mats.

"Nah, let them be. I want to see how her performance later on us affected by her exhaustion now," Briareos answered. Tereus glanced at the newcomer and caught the slight twitch in her expression as she cartwheeled away from Deunan to regain some space. Both males knew that Artemis had heard what the cyborg had said.

"I take it you intend to tire me, am I correct Briareos? If so, you and Tereus should be ready to fight right after a winner is decided here," Artemis called to the two men while keeping her eyes locked on Deunan and her guard up. Both aforementioned men saw the ploy as soon as it was played, and - to their surprise - it worked on Deunan.

"You mind keeping your head in this fight, rookie? You still haven't won yet," Deunan all but snarled. Artemis smirked, her first real emotion on her face since the trio had picked her up, and goaded the blonde further.

"Not right this instant, no. But within five minutes, I will walk away with one victory under my belt today out of the twenty I intend to get."

"Oh yeah," Deunan said. "Well you'll have to finish me off first!" And with that, Deunan rushed at Artemis once again. And just as Artemis anticipated and Briareos and Tereus knew, Deunan got sloppy. Not by much, but all the same the slip in composure was there. She left herself open more, giving Artemis the small gap she needed to corner her opponent. As Deunan charged in for a punch right at the stomach, Artemis stepped to the left and caught the other's clenched fist between her ribs and right arm. A side-sweep to the left with her foot, and Artemis had Deunan sprawled on her stomach across the floor. She took the arm she had trapped and held it across the other woman's back.

"And that," Artemis said, "would be a win for me." She let Deunan go and stepped back, offering up a hand up to the other woman.

Deunan turned over and stared up at Artemis slightly agape. She didn't fall for such an obvious tactic! She scoffed to herself. Well, _apparently_ she did.

"Nice trick rookie," she said, laughing a little while grasping the hand offered to her and letting herself get pulled up. Still holding Artemis's hand, Deunan continued in a low voice, "but don't think that will work with those two."

"Right," Artemis replied, knowing she meant Briareos and Tereus. She watched as Deunan stepped out of the ring and caught the towel and water bottle Briareos tossed her as he walked in to take her place. The cyborg took a long look at the smaller woman and without introduction settled into his beginning stance.

"I find myself at a bit if a disadvantage now," she mused aloud. "Both of my next opponents have seen how I fight, and as I am not drawing extra energy, I am tired while they are fresh. I assume you wish to test my endurance?"

Briareos said nothing as he stared at her. Artemis nodded and settled into her own stance and resolved herself to watch her newest opponent. Tereus saw her eyes flicker across Briareos' form over and over. She was probably looking for a twitch or a muscle tensing up to predict where her opponent would be coming from. Tereus snorted. As a cyborg, Briareos _couldn't_ involuntarily twitch. Aside from his body not being programmed that way, Briareos was as steadfast as they came in battle.

Neither moved for a good five minutes. However, the crowd that had gathered when Deunan and Artemis fought knew better to leave. Once one of them moved, it would be one hell of a battle.

And then both lunged at each other at the exact same moment. Tereus noted that Briareos, being so much taller and heavier, had to aim lower than he would have liked while making sure that his momentum didn't carry him into Artemis' contact zone or leave him open. And a similar problem was presented to Artemis in reverse - she had to aim higher than she ever had to, as well as put all her strength into every hit; it would take more than just momentum to knock him over the way she had with Deunan, so Artemis couldn't waste any energy with punches to soften the tin man up. Not that he could be 'softened up' anyway - at least not in this setting. His entire body was as durable as a spacecraft. It would take a nuclear explosion to rock Briareos.

Briareos, for his part, didn't think to hold back on his hits. Aside from letting Artemis know that she had left herself open, he fought with a specific goal in mind - to work the rookie over good for Tereus. But on the side, he was fascinated to see how her human brain and AI unit worked in sync, just like his did. While his metallic body absorbed the majority of the impact of her punches, hers was still flesh and blood - enhanced or not, those blows she took had to have hurt. Already he could see areas that were going to bruise badly.

Yet she was still incredibly resilient for having just fought with Deunan, and she had schooled her face into one of blank concentration, even the hardest of hits (that sent her flying backwards) only made her wince for half a second as she flipped herself upright and came at him again. He could practically see her adjusting to his battle strategies as they fought, learning how to account for his size becoming almost second nature. The match only ended when both went for a hit to the face at exactly the same moment. However. With Briareos' larger size, his reach went farther than Artemis'. In a true battle, Briareos would have won only because of that distinction. But for all intents and purposes, it was a draw.

Artemis was the first to pull away from her opponent, dropping her guard mostly. Briareos disengaged next, backing up a pace or two, patting the woman on the shoulder and offering a 'nice job kid,' as he turned and walked out of the ring.

As Briareos passed him, Tereus noted the slight limp in his gait. Probably because the girl actually managed to hurt the tin man. In all likelihood she knocked a screw loose in one of his joints. "Hey, Briareos," he called. "You and Deunan get yourselves checked out."

Briareos took his place to Deunan's right and leveled a stare at his clone.

"We can wait. 'Sides, I want to see you two fight," he answered. Tereus raised an eyebrow and turned to the ring. He took his time walking in and circled Artemis from the ring's edge, prowling not unlike some feline predator. He noted how her tattoos were spinning and pulsing erratically, dizzily fast. Yet the longer he watched, the slower they moved. Her nanobots must have been working overtime to bring her body back into homeostasis, he realized. Her breathing slowed, her muscles shook less, and even the faintest of bruises from her and Deunan's battle were already fading. And though all of that, her face was as impassive as his own was.

"Don't imagine that I will go easy on you," Tereus said, coming to a stop in front of the woman. She tilted her head slightly in challenge.

"I should hope not," she said dryly. "That would be quite the insult."

"Indeed."

"That being said, do not expect an easy fight on your end."

"After all of your hot air earlier, I would be surprised if you didn't live up to expectation."

Just like before, back at the island, Tereus and Artemis locked stares.

* * *

Yeah. My failed attempt at a cliff hanger. I'm sorry. And I know my fight scenes suck, which is why this chapter is a lot shorter than my 2,500 word minimum. Yet if I merged it with the next chapter, it would once again be too long. So I'll leave it as is, and hope that you all like it.

Once again, HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME! *confetti and streamers everywhere while a marching band plays Happy Birthday to strobe lights*

*ahem*

Anywho... please like, share, follow, and review, and as always, be safe everyone!


	7. Fight

**Update: June 28th, 2016**

Another unintended hiatus, my deepest appologies. May and June were some hectic months for me, what with finals and graduation and prom and college and a whole bunch of other stuff that you probably don't want to hear me ramble on about. So I will spare you all my boring life story and continue on to the story you all came here to read: _Partners_!

Disclaimer: Non teño Appleseed (Galician)

* * *

Artemis internally took store of her current status as she squared off with Tereus, sensors going off in tandem as the room quieted once more. ' _I'm slowing down_ ,' she realized. _'Well, that's what happens when you finish one of Circe's training sessions right before being kidnapped from the only home you ever knew and put into my position.'_

For all of Artemis's talk earlier, she was nowhere near 100%. And yes, while she had a data cache of Tereus's fighting style (she figured that since he was a bioroid clone made primarily from the DNA of Briareos, he would act and think - and therefore fight - the same way too), she was reaching the end of her rope. Even now she could feel how heavy her body was. If she bothered to look, she was sure that she would see a good amount of her body cells up and die on her from exhaustion or malnutrition or stress or any combination of the three. She would need food, at least a bit, to continue. Otherwise she would shut down completely within the next three hours, given the pace that her new teammates had set. Rest for her mechanical side could come later, so long as she had something left for her cells to burn.

A solid punch to her sternum woke Artemis up from her introspection. Unprepared as she was, her body spasmed as her breath was knocked out of her and she folded under the force of the impact. Grimacing for a second, she pulled herself off of the floor and stared at Tereus a bit in shock. Not so much at his landing a hit as her not seeing it coming. She was so in her head that she had completely missed his wind up.

Artemis mentally scolded herself and forced her senses into overdrive. She needed to pay attention right now, otherwise they would know that she was slipping. She couldn't afford to be locked up in an isolation ward because she flunked a basic training test. She had to make sure that Circe would get her just desserts for turning her into a monster, and she couldn't do that in a padded room.

Artemis narrowed her eyes and settled into a defense stance. Tereus was unreadable, as expected for a bioroid, but still Artemis noticed how he favored his right hand and how his left upper quadriceps would twitch right before he was about to lunge at her. Another punch came at her, this time a right uppercut, and Artemis spun away to dodge before throwing her own kick at his exposed back. But the male dodged, and her foot barely grazed his shoulder hard enough to shift his training gear. She ground her teeth and disengaged, backing up a pace to distance herself from her opponent. _Damn it,_ of all times why did her normally amazing body have to fail _now_?

Tereus landed a powerful roundhouse kick to the left side of Artemis's ribs, right under her outstretched arm, sending the female spinning into the surrounding cage. His eyes narrowed in confusion as he watched her visibly blink to clear her head and shake her muscles loose once more. What was she _doing_? She was an amazing fighter up until now. At least that last hit seemed to wake her up from whatever was on her mind. About damn time she got her head in the game.

"Hey rookie," he called. "Wake up. You'd be dead right now if this were a real battle. Where's that hard fight I was promised?"

Artemis didn't move, her form still hanging from the bars of the cage. He could see her breathing, so at least he knew that he didn't break anything important. Prime Minister Athena probably wouldn't be happy if he broke her new toy so early in her little ESWAT stint. But he was getting tired of her snubbing him.

"If you won't fight, then I guess we are done here." Tereus dropped his guard completely, convinced that she wouldn't put up any more of a fight. "I knew it was a waste of time bringing something like you here." He turned to leave...

...and there she was, right in front of him, fist cocked back for a punch. Tereus barely had time to shift his weight as the world sped up to the speed of sound and he watched her release the punch, not even having enough time to instinctively flinch or even blink, much less brace for the impending pain. Yet the pain never came. Her fist had ended up just shy of the bridge of his nose. He followed her arm back to her tense body, her form strung tight as a rubber band stretched taunt. He saw the tattoos up her arm spinning wildly all over again, despite them having slowed down before their spar begun.

Spar? What spar? He was practically beating her into the ground, and she wasn't doing very much to stop him. But looking at the woman now, he realized that she had no idea what had happened either. However, she wasn't complaining. No, in fact, she looked incredibly angry, intense contempt swirling underneath her dark, cold, calculating eyes. Her mouth was twisted into an angry snarl, razor teeth glinting in the florescent lighting in the training halls.

"Now," she hissed in a low voice," we are done here."

And with that she turned and stalked out of the training area and into the women's locker room, braid flinging over she shoulder at her sharp turn. Deunan and Briareos stared after her before Deunan glanced at her boyfriend and ran after the other woman. Tereus, however, kept staring into the space where Artemis had just been, unmoving as a statue.

"What the fuck just..." he murmured to himself. Vaguely he was aware of Briareos stepping besides him.

"You know, I don't think she took the whole 'something' comment too well," Briareos said wryly. Tereus made no comment for a long while. Finally he spoke.

"How did she move that fast?" the clone asked in a bewildered tone. Briareos sighed and shook his head.

"I don't know. Even my sensors couldn't keep up. And she wasn't anywhere near her full power; movement that fast would require a full tank, and she said that she wasn't drawing extra power. Who knows how long ago it was when she last recharged, or ate for that matter?"

Tereus sighed and shook his head. Deunan emerged from the locker rooms just then, Artemis still just inside the threshold. Deunan gave the younger woman a slightly wary glance before jogging up to her two teammates.

"She wants to go to the shooting range," Deunan whispered. Tereus snorted. Of course she did. What better way to cool off than shooting bullets into a target?

"We should let her rest," Briareos refuted. "We all challenged her as hard as we could physically today. We should-"

Tereus tuned out the other two as he stared at Artemis again. She was leaning against the inside of the doorjamb, legs crossed at the ankles and arms crossed over her chest. Her jaw was locked tight, but her features were once again wrested into a semblance of calm disinterest. Her visible tattoos had slowed again, the intricate designs pulsing softly with her calmer heart rate and breathing. Now she had her thigh holsters from Circe's compound, one on each leg just below the ends of her suit, and a belt with multiple cargo pockets attached to it hanging diagonally from her waist to hip. And, curiously enough, she had a katana strapped to the back of her belt.

Tereus blinked. Who used ancient katanas anymore? Those went out of style ages ago, back even before the Second, maybe even the First World War. He wondered where she had gotten it from (because he certainly didn't remember her leaving Circe's compound with it); if she actually knew how to use it. It looked like a magnificent piece, even with it resting in its home and hanging across her back. The midnight black sheath was accented with a blood-red design of what looked like a dragon, curling up the sheath's length. The handle was wrapped in red, leaving the black to peek out in perfect diamonds. Every part of it shined in the light, and Tereus could guess that the woman had spent many hours caring for that blade.

Even still, it was just metal. Not enhanced with technology, from what he could tell. In today's warfare, the blade would most likely shatter upon impact with anything after the year 2025. And that confused Tereus all the more. Why would she keep the blade? It served no purpose, other than to be a distraction and a hindrance to her performance. Sentimentality? Perhaps, but then again, perhaps not. She was half machine, qualifying her for the bioroid stance of repressed emotion. She was also half human, allowing her to be placed with people like Deunan, who sometimes felt too much or too deeply or both. Tereus furrowed his brow as he continued to think about the puzzle of a girl in front of him.

Artemis felt the heat of Tereus's stare intensely on her face. She didn't really care. That asshole could do as he pleased. Poke her, prod her, scrutinize her, question her – it didn't matter, not in the slightest. She had a mission, and she would do whatever she needed to do to get it done. Circe would pay for all of the misery she caused, and that was the end of it.

Artemis sighed internally and took a deep breath, doing another full-body scan. That last move she made…she had never moved that fast in her entire existence, as an android or otherwise. That movement was borderline speed of sound. She shot a glance at the sparing mats where she had been tested, ignoring the trio that stood just on the edge of her vision, noting the impressive 50-square-foot hexagonal ring, and layering a simulation of her last spar over the area. Tereus had kicked her to the northern edge of the ring, and he had walked away to approximately ten feet from the south edge of the ring. Covering almost 40 feet in a fraction of a second. Almost instantaneous movement.

Artemis removed the layover of her spar and stared at her shoes again. How had she done that? Never before had she moved so fast. Not even Circe had been able to push her that far. So what made this particular spar different? She huffed and started a mental list. She wasn't in immediate danger here, she wasn't under that witch's watchful gaze, she didn't have to worry about any of her former cohort-

"Artemis," Deunan addressed her as she walked up with her two wingmen in tow. The taller woman picked her head up the slightest bit and glanced at the blonde. "Are you absolutely sure that you want to continue with the tests? We could wait until tomorrow to-"

"No."

Deunan trailed off at the abrupt refusal. Artemis pushed off from the door frame, keeping her eyes resolutely ahead as she turned to face Deunan, she walked passed them.

"I will finish the tests today." Artemis walked out of the training center as if she knew where she was going. Both Tereus and Briareos gave other woman in their team a look.

"What? She asked where it was!" the petite woman cried. Tereus put a hand to his forehead and massaged his temples while Briareos put his hands on his hips and shook his head, looking very much like an admonishing nanny. If the situation was different, she would have laughed at them. But as it was, Deunan was already walking on thin ice, and she seemed to enjoy waving a blowtorch about her feet.

"Hellcat, the entire point of us being her guard is so that she doesn't get in trouble. Therefore we kinda need to stay close to her," the cyborg chided. Deunan gave her lover a pout.

"Well sooo-ry. Let's go after her then," she snipped as she went after the younger woman, jogging down the hallway to catch up with Artemis. Anything, really, to escape another lecture. But then again, it would still be waiting for her when she and Briareos got home.

"You know," Tereus said as he and Briareos watched Deunan run after Artemis, "I think that she is the single most confounding contradiction to ever walk the earth."

"I don't doubt it," Briareos responded. "Come on, let's see what the rookie has for us now."

* * *

And thus concludes part one of Artemis' tests. Again, I still suck majorly at fight scenes, but I am getting better the more I force myself to write them.

In other news, I will be trying to update all my stories at least once by the end of next week, probably more than once if I'm lucky. So be on the lookout if you're following anything else!

That is all for now. Love you all, like, share, follow, and review, and as always, be safe everybody!


	8. Memory

**Update: July 7th, 2016**

So another new chapter, and another cameo! Keep your eyes peeled!

Disclaimer: au i ponoi appleseed (Hawaiian)

* * *

Artemis stood at one of the designated shooting points in the large range in ESWAT HQ, her stance solid and her body steady. The dark of the room didn't bother her, as she was still able to sense everything around her using her scopes. Her ears twitched the slightest bit when she heard the telltale _buzz_ of intercom feedback echoing in the large room.

"Okay, Artemis, this is simple. Shoot all the clay pigeons tossed out. Clear ones are worth one point, blue five points, red, ten points, white twenty five points. Hitting consecutive targets is a multiplier times two for every good shot. We're giving you a total of 250 points, no multiplier. You have two minutes. Trial begins in thirty seconds," Tereus spoke through the intercom into the shooting range from up in the observation room. The countdown screens showed the remaining time before the first pigeon was let loose.

Artemis took a deep breath and let her arms hang loose, next to her compact eXploders on her thighs. Her Woodpecker was on her back, and extra clips were on her belt. A glance at the countdown was all Artemis allowed herself before she focused on the empty field in front of her. There were obstacles scattered all over the field, some of which would move as the trial went on. Her hair was tied back tight in her braid, only the few wisps that wouldn't grow long enough hanging loose in her eyes. There was a slight breeze in the large room, probably courtesy of some hidden ventilation. She focused on these small things. It was better than thinking about the last time she held a gun, the last time she killed.

The countdown reached ten, and it added sound for Artemis's convenience. The mobile parts of the course activated, warming themselves up for what was supposed to be the fastest course the computer could manage. She guessed that it was really only at half of its top speed.

And then movement in the corner of her eye almost made her turn and run toward it. But she knew there was no one else in the range with her, no one to move in her peripheral vision. Still, the small movements kept happening, little flicks and twitches just beyond her line of sight, and with a small start she realized that she was seeing people running.

 _Five_...

Artemis closed her eyes, shoving the ever-present images of people running and hiding from her, scampering away into the thick jungle that she called her back yard, pushing that time as far from-

 _Four_...

-her mind as she possibly could, she couldn't afford to mess up here, she had a mission to complete damnit, she had to stay strong and resolute, she couldn't get soft, not again, not like that time she didn't-

 _Three_...

-kill that woman, that one moment of compassion, of pity, of _weakness_ taught her a lot, taught her too much; Circe found out and she was punished, it hurt oh god it had hurt, but that woman, that-

 _Two_...

-that poor woman, if only Artemis had killed her when she had the chance, maybe it would have been better for the both of them, maybe she wouldn't have been-

 _One_...

-been so brutalized and mistreated even in her death, if only she had been stronger, if only she had been smarter, if only she had been faster, if only if only if only...

Start.

Artemis's mind finally cleared of everything as she palmed her twin eXploders and fired round after round into the air, her headphones muffling the sounds to dull clips. Her dark eyes flicked from one place to the other as she let her enhanced senses and her second brain do the real work. Within the space of a second, she could knock four pigeons out of the sky, and she never once missed. The firearms were familiar to her, the leather grips fitting snugly in her hand. Round after round left her guns, not even the kickback making her lose her momentum.

An image, unbidden, flew into her mind's eye. A girl - small, so small, so thin. Long blonde hair hung down loose all the way down to her waist as she dodged a tree and jumped over a root. Her utility belt, not unlike Artemis's own, jangled with every step she took. The black long sleeved turtleneck tank she wore was ripped on the left shoulder and on the right, below the rib cage, blood oozing from both wounds all the way down to stain her yellow shorts. She apparently had lost one of her dark yellow gloves somewhere back in the jungle, and her matching boots were so covered in mud that you could barely see the color. The girl dared a glance back, her goggles around her neck, and cerulean eyes widened in horror of whatever she saw. And it wasn't just the horror of being hunted; no, it was the horror of being hunted by one you once called comrade, by one that you once dared to call friend. A small red dot appeared on the girl's forehead, then those eyes were empty; they would be empty forevermore.

Artemis's aim nearly flew way off course as she put a name to the face. _Terra_...

Artemis shook her head and glared into the din of the shooting range. _'Keep focus, damnit!'_ she cursed herself. She couldn't get sloppy now, memory of killing a friend or not. "Kick it up a notch!" she called out to Tereus up in the observation room even as she holstered one of her guns long enough to tear the headphones off of her head. They would be nothing more than a hindrance now. She wanted the noise to clear out her head.

"What does she think she's doing?" Lance said from behind Tereus. The other man could only shake his head in disbelief.

"She's gonna go deaf," Deunan breathed in horror. Briareos put a placating hand on his girlfriend's shoulder and turned to look at Lance.

"She's a cyborg. She can handle it."

Lance stared at the tin man for a long while before turning his gaze on the young woman down below. "Do what she said, Tereus," he finally relented, sighing. _'It's like they all have death wishes,'_ he griped to himself.

Tereus shook his head and pushed the machines to their max. If they kept this up, the damned things would give out and explode.

"Alright Artemis, the machines are at max. You have less than a minute left," he spoke into the intercom. Artemis nodded to show that she had heard, and with her free hand reached for her Woodpecker. As the machines spit out more of the clay discs from more random places at more unpredictable intervals and angles, Artemis kept hold of both her eXploder and her Woodpecker. Once the clip on the smaller handgun ran out, she dropped the eXploder and grabbed her holstered one from her opposite thigh, all while shooting the clay projectiles dead-center with the Woodpecker. And then she went at it again, with both guns firing continuously into the large room.

Deunan was keeping track of the score that Artemis was racking up. "Um, Lance? What's the max number of points she could possibly get if she hit every target dead center and not waste a single shot?"

Lance typed quickly into the computer, pulling up a laundry list of numbers. "Well, that depends on how the computer is set to calculate the multiplier. If she doesn't miss and it's by type, she could potentially get 450 points. If the multiplier just doubles her previous score every time she doesn't miss, the max point total comes out to be..." he trailed and leaned back for the blond to take a look.

"What, Lance?" Briareos asked as he came over and checked the screen. "Wow. That is a lot of numbers."

"Well, great, I guess," Deunan responded. "At least I know I'm not hallucinating these numbers over here then." Lance and Briareos turned to stare at the smaller woman.

"You mean she's not missing? Not once?"

"Nope. Not if her score is in the billions with one more shot."

"Goddamn, Deunan, what kind of rookie did you bring me?"

"I have no idea."

Just then, the buzzer sounded for the test to end. All four occupants of the observation room gathered at the large viewing window to see Artemis clip her Woodpecker to her back and holster her two empty eXploders before picking up the empty magazines and leaving the shells for maintenance to clean up. She glanced at the scoreboard to see her score breakdown: of the five 25-point, the eight 5-point, the five 10-point, and the ten 1-point pigeons, she had hit all of them with no misses. And just as Deunan had said, her score had come out to more than 11 billion, according to the multiplier. Apparently the computer had just doubled her previous score for every shot she didn't miss. But Artemis didn't seem all that surprised at all. She just turned and walked out of the shooting range calmly.

Tereus was the first to rush out of the observation booth and jump down the steps. He met Artemis at the doors to the shooting range and skidded to a stop in front of her. She wasn't looking up, though; she was tightening the straps of her left glove, her face the epitome of blank concentration. One could tell that she was just going through the motions of a routine she knew by heart, but her mind was somewhere else completely.

"Artemis," he said softly. Said woman looked up abruptly and stopped short, her hands stilling in the middle of fiddling with the straps of her gloves. Her eyes were bleak, yet she schooled her features into one mimicking attentiveness and concern.

"What is it Tereus?" she asked in a placating voice as she dropped her hands to her sides.

"You…" Tereus started, unsure of what exactly he had to say. Too many thoughts were running though his mind, too jumbled up for him to pull apart and arrange into nice, neat rows. This was a first for him; he was normally completely in control of his thoughts. That's how he was made. He wasn't supposed to be at a loss of words. He was supposed to be the one with the answers when the other two people on his team were conflicted with emotion. He wasn't even given the chance to pull himself together, though, because the others had come down the steps behind him, and had finally caught up.

"Rookie, that was the best run I've ever seen, aside from Deunan and Briareos," Lance said as he, Briareos, and Deunan came down the last of the steps. Artemis and Tereus both turned to their commander and Artemis gave a slight bow to her new superior.

"Thank you, Sir," she said graciously. "While I don't approve of the methods Circe used to teach me my skills, I am under no illusion that those methods did not work."

"No kidding," Lance said as he placed a heavy hand on the young woman's shoulder. "What will you amaze us with next?" All parties present picked up on the slight note of mockery in his tone, and both Deunan and Tereus narrowed their eyes at the commander. Artemis, however, was completely composed as could be.

"If it wouldn't be too much trouble, I would like to complete the landmate operation test today. I'd rather not have to do it tomorrow," she said coolly.

"Fine then," he answered. "Let's go outside and get you suited up. You aren't as small as our Lady Warrior here," he said, pointing to Deunan, whose face scrunched up with a barely-held-in sharp retort, "so we don't have to adjust the cockpit. You would not believe the amount of money we spend on her customized landmates, especially since she wrecks them on a daily basis."

"Hey!" an indignant Deunan protested. "That's not fair Lance! You can't expect me to run into hostage situations and not wreck a landmate or two!"

"Well we wouldn't be mad if it was only one or two," Briareos shot back at her, ruffling her hair. Deunan slapped his hand away in mock-anger. Tereus laughed at the group softly, the first time Artemis had seen the bioroid truly at ease. Artemis, meanwhile, was watching with a quiet fascination.

This was what she and the other girls had been missing. Being able to relax enough to joke around, even in the presence of a superior. Granted, they were still mindful that Lance was there, but they all looked…content. At peace with each other. Almost like a family.

Artemis thought back to her time in Circe's lab with the other surviving androids. The few android-cyborgs that survived their transitions had banded together, all stuck in the same metaphorical boat against their will. A common enemy, if one could go so far. Even still, they had never laughed or spoke freely with one another, and they all knew it. Professionalism and a stoic demeanor kept you alive there. And when all of the hybrids were gone, save for her, the pure androids were little more than life-sized mechanical dolls with AI units. Artemis wouldn't want to spend her time with them if they were the last sentient beings on earth.

She looked up at the group before her, and found herself envying them. She wanted that companionship they had. But she would never be one of them. She couldn't; she had a job to do, and she was going to do it alone.

* * *

So to clarify a bit more on Artemis' character, remember she is a calculating type of logical. In a rescue-one-or-rescue-one-hundred situation, she'll rescue the one hundred, whereas Deunan and Briareos, and even Tereus at this point, will try to rescue all. She won't intervene unless it is something clearly against the rules. She has the mindset that forming close bonds will be nothing but a problem later on.


	9. Partners

**Update: July 20, 2016**

And we return to the next part of Artemis's tests! Landmates abound!

Disclaimer: i Appleseed malik deyil (Azerbaijani)

* * *

Artemis followed Lance out of the shooting range silently, depositing her guns when prompted. Deunan, Tereus, and Briareos followed after them and stood off to the side of the landmate hangar, content to watch from the sidelines - for now. Yoshitsune rushed out of another door and started bustling around with Artemis, getting her outfitted with her combat suit. Said woman looked mildly interested and partly irritated that the bioroid was making such a fuss over her. Lance left her with the mechanic and walked over to the trio.

"So here's how this is going to work," he started. "As Artemis is still technically under Olympus protective custody, she will be staying in a safe house out of the city for security's sake. The less people know she's here, the less chance she can get targeted. Tereus, I want you to stay with her since Deunan and Briareos are inseparable now. Keep tabs on her. I want to know any random thing she does, whether it seems harmless or not. Deunan and Briareos, we need more info on Circe and anything that she's been up to. See what you can dig up on the web, Interpol, all of it. I'll have a team looking through some confidential files, trying to link anything suspicious back to Circe. Got it?"

"Yessir," came three responses.

"Hey, careful! Don't-" Yoshitsune stammered as Artemis started up the landmate. Deunan laughed and jogged over to Artemis without so much as a formal dismissal from Lance, leaving three males to stare after her.

"Start out slow until you get the hang of it," she called up to Artemis. Said woman nodded absentmindedly and slowly got to her feet. Deunan backed away as Artemis took a step forward, and then another, and then another. Lance turned to leave, giving Tereus another pat on the back while Briareos got into his own landmate and headed out the hangar.

"Jeez, she's almost as good as Deunan," Yoshitsune murmured to himself, recalling how the small blonde didn't even have a day's worth of practice in her first landmate before she went out on a mission with it. Tereus nodded in agreement before walking out of the hangar to watch Briareos teach Artemis the ropes.

"Keep in mind that your legs only reach the knee of the landmate," Briareos's voice came through the comlink in Artemis's headband.

"This is going to take some getting used to," she mumbled to herself as she overshot the large soccer ball she was kicking back and forth with Briareos. Her second brain kicked in and accounted for the extra power of the landmate, as well as it's longer reach; by the third round, Artemis could handle the ball easily.

"Nice," Briareos commented. "Let's take this into the air."

In a split second he was airborne, tossing and hitting the ball around effortlessly. Artemis grit her teeth and pushed off of the ground, surprised when the antigravity wings kicked in with a jerk. It took all of her concentration to stay aloft and not careen wildly out of control at first, and the other cyborg was _merciless_ with her. She barely had control over the landmate when he started launching the ball at her at top speed.

The for the first three minutes Artemis struggled admirably with the landmate before she relaxed and let herself meld with the large machine. And then in a snap, it was second nature to her. Her movements smoothed out, her flight path steadied, her aim perfected, her power controlled; it was almost as if she was born in a landmate.

Lance came back with a tablet and stood just inside the doorway of the hangar and watched as Artemis mastered her first landmate and scoffed. "Figures she's good at this too," he muttered as he typed something into a database.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Tereus stood next to Deunan and observed the match between his teammate and his charge. What had Circe _done_ to this woman? She was almost superhuman.

"So? What'cha think?" Deunan gave Tereus a shove after she noticed his gaping.

"I…I'm not entirely sure what I think of her," Tereus answered truthfully. "I want to hate her; every part of me is saying that she's nothing but bad news. But there's something else…like another voice in my head that just wants to understand her better. To take her apart and find out what makes her tick, so to speak."

Deunan turned and stared at her friend, watching the way he watched the newest team addition maneuver in the sky and rambled about the confusion in his head. In all honesty, if Deunan didn't know any better, she would have said that Tereus was in love. But that was impossible. He was genetically engineered to not feel emotion. Hate, pity, lust, compassion, love – all of these would be lost to him. It was only because the majority of his genetic makeup was identical to Briareos's that he felt _anything_ for her, even though they had all of that sorted out already.

And for the first time, Deunan found herself feeling _sorry_ for her bioroid companion. She turned and watched the landmate that held her lover. To live a life without love…she probably would have gone insane years ago if Briareos had never shown up in her life. And with a start, she realized that Artemis was in the same position as Tereus. As a machine, she wasn't expected to feel emotion either, but as a human, she was never shown the love and support that Deunan herself was lucky to have, if only for a little while form her mother and father, and then later on by Briareos and the rest of her ESWAT family.

Tereus had fallen silent beside her as Briareos and Artemis landed and dismounted from their landmates, and Deunan turned back to him. Gave him a well-placed jab in the ribs with her elbow. "Hey, there's your charge. You have to take her home, remember?"

Deunan laughed as Tereus frowned down at her, earning her a dry chuckle from the male and a quick jab in the forehead before he walked off. She watched as he passed Bri, who came up to her and gathered her in his arms. She heaved a sigh and finally relaxed in his embrace. "Good work out there."

"Thanks girl," he let himself relax as well and followed Deunan's gaze over to Tereus, who was watching Artemis as she learned how to take care of a landmate from Yoshitsune. He chuckled as he came to the same conclusion that his girlfriend did. "They're gonna be fun to watch this month."

Deunan huffed a laugh. "I was thinking the same thing. They're like a match made in heaven."

"Hmm. Or a match made in hell, depending on how you look at it."

"Well damn. Never thought of it like that. But you could be right, I guess."

Briareos chuckled and roused his reclining hellcat. "Alright girlie, enough daydreaming for us. We have some internet searching to do."

Deunan gave him her signature pout, full-blown cheeks and all. "Fine," she sighed and followed him in.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Tereus was staring at her, Artemis knew. Yet she studiously ignored him as she absorbed Yoshitsune's methods of landmate care like a sponge. It was fascinating – she could sense that he was a bioroid, yet his passion for the large machines was overwhelmingly obvious. Just a side effect of being specifically made to be a mechanic? Or had the bioroid actually grown to love what he did?

"…and then she's ready to go back to the hangar," the bluette said with a satisfied tone in his voice as he picked himself off of the ground. On an unseen command, a tank loaded down with three other landmates pulled up beside them and hoisted the large machine up and away.

Artemis watched Yoshitsune closely, taking in his contented and relaxed face even as he watched the tank head back into the hangar, as if he didn't completely trust the crew on board not to take care of his big toys. On an impulse, she turned and took a long look at Tereus, who was fiddling with his phone. He showed the same qualities of devotion towards the other two members of their four man squad, particularly to Deunan. As did Briareos, but then again, he still had a human brain. Strange. She had thought that bioroids possessed no emotion, and yet here she was, in the company of two, and both extremely capable of showing the emotions that she herself had long ago repressed.

"Hey. Ready to go?"

Tereus' tenor snapped Artemis out of her musing. He had a set of keys dangling from his fingers and was already walking slowly toward the hangar. Holding back a retort, she followed him back inside and he let her change back into her normal combat suit. By the time she came out of the locker room with a small bag containing all of her belongings, Tereus had changed as well and was waiting for her, back leaning against the opposite wall, in dark wash jeans and a black muscle shirt under a navy blue jacket with amber accents. Looking up at her, he frowned a second before hoisting his own canvas bag over his shoulder and nodding his head toward the door toward the garage, where the personal vehicles of the ESWAT members were kept.

Artemis did as she was bid and walked into the three story garage, only to stop as her eyes swept over a good hundred or more cars, trucks, and even a few motorcycles. Tereus gave a soft scoff of laughter as he pushed past her and used his keys to unlock the door to a black-on-black levitating car. He tossed his bag in the back seat and held open the passenger door before raising an eyebrow at her. She hid her laugh with a scoff of her own and climbed in; she couldn't help it. _Boys and their toys_. He shut the door after her and slid into the driver's seat. The car _purred_ to life a second later, the large engine under the hood impressive.

"Lance arranged for me to stay with you at your safe house," Tereus murmured as he backed out and pulled the car onto the street. Artemis nodded absentmindedly as she watched the city whiz by them. So much color, so much life. Never before had she been so overwhelmed, and she thought that if Tereus opened the window her senses would have been so overloaded that she might have blacked out if she didn't dial them back fast enough.

She eyed a couple walking through a park. The man was talking, making the girl laugh as she clasped her hand around his arm. And then a second later, they drove by a street party with a live band that played instruments that glowed in the twilight shadows. She looked up, and towers that touched the sky faded out of sight so that not even the lights of the upper floors could be seen. So different from the years of isolation she was used to.

Everyone here seemed far happier than they should have been, considering the world Artemis herself had come from. It was hard for her to grasp the idea that they could live such a comfortable life, completely oblivious to the world outside Olympus borders, while she grew up living her own personal hell every day. From what her sensors could pick up, a good portion of the populous was bioroid, so that might have something to do with it. And from what she had seen, ESWAT's existence wasn't exactly secret. Artemis wondered what the normal people thought ESWAT's purpose was, if they honestly thought that there was no real threat to be protected from.

Artemis sighed and closed her eyes as they passed yet another park full of contently unaware Olympus citizens. She was supposed to protect them now. With a team of people she had just met. Granted, Lance could have put her with any other team, but Deunan, Briareos, and Tereus were just _slightly_ above stranger status. She would have to play nice for a while, get a feel for how the three of them operated before she started doing her own thing.

But when she got the chance, Artemis would take care of her own business without bothering the rest of them. No need to drag anyone else along back into her own personal hellhole.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Tereus stared at the girl sitting next to him out of the corner of his eye, keeping the bare minimum attention needed on the road. Her braid was tossed over her shoulder, little wisps of hair still framing her face. She hadn't uttered a word the entire car ride out of the city. Her eyes had said plenty though. She was drinking in the world around her like it was water. He guessed that her upbringing held none of the excitement that Olympus had, or any of the contentment to be found here. And if she was anything like he was – read, an antisocial recluse – she was probably going to lock herself in her room tonight and take on the outside world tomorrow. He glanced at the GPS on the dashboard and turned off of the highway, taking them into rural areas. Trees replaced skyscrapers, and front lawns replaced billboards. Streetlights were a cheery pale yellow, welcoming and comforting. Five minutes later, he pulled into the driveway of the safe house and turned the car off. "Artemis? We're-"

He stopped himself short and shook his head. The girl was fast asleep. Now _that_ was something that he didn't expect. The girl was so cautious and on edge that he doubted that she had fully relaxed the entire car ride. And yet her she was, knocked out cold. Well, then again, they did push her pretty hard. And she had refrained from recharging for all of the trials. No surprise that she was drop-dead tired. He rubbed his face, trying to think of how to handle this. He shook his head and sighed, pulling the key out of the ignition and picking out the keys to the house on the key chain that he held in his hand.

He got out and picked her up easily, which surprised him. She was light – almost as light as Deunan was, despite the other woman being smaller and thinner than the woman he held now. Sighing, Tereus managed to open the front door himself and took Artemis upstairs to the second floor. Picking a room at random, he laid her carefully on the down mattress and pulled a comforter over her. One more trip outside, and he had both of their bags in their respective rooms. Quick shower, change, and lock up weapons in the safe in the back of the closet. Tereus checked on Artemis one more time – still fast asleep – and then went to check out the house. Might as well get the layout down now.

The house was a small one, not unlike Deunan and Briareos' suburban flat. Two stories, not counting the attic or the basement. The first floor was pretty standard – a front sitting room lightly furnished with a couch, recliner, coffee table, and a television on an interior wall; a kitchen right behind the TV wall, outfitted with a good set of stainless steel appliances; and an adjacent dining room separated from the kitchen only by one wall and a serving window, not unlike one found in a diner. The stairs leading to the second floor started in the kitchen, and was next to a door that probably led into the backyard. Tereus slipped back the deadbolt of the thick security door, completely expecting – yep, a backyard of equal size as the front yard. The driveway led straight back here, right into a one-car garage. The yard itself was just grass, with a white fence running all the way around the perimeter of the property. Nothing lurking in the shadows as far as he could see, but he still slid the deadbolt back home when he closed the door again. Basement was standard – a game room with another television, a pool table, and a laundry area sectioned off. The boiler room was adjacent to that, and that was it for the basement. Heading back upstairs, he checked the extra bedroom (which was the master suit) and the two bathrooms. All secure. Finally, Tereus took the other single room and allowed himself to sleep.

* * *

And that concludes this title chapter!

The cameo from last chapter is Terra, from _Teen Titans_. You know, the girl with the earth bending powers that switched sides and joined Slade after originally siding with the Titans and ultimately giving up her own life to save them from a volcano? Anyway, in this story Terra was one of the hybrids that survived her transformation, but if you remember, Artemis was there when she was killed. Why, how, and by whom will all be revealed in time.

More Artemis facts! If you can't already tell, Artemis is an observant person by nature, more often than not coming up with her own conclusions on things that she could easily just ask someone about. Normally, she's right, but there are times when she could ask for some guidance. She just doesn't feel like she needs to, more because she's so used to not relying on others to help her. The fact that both Yoshitsune and Tereus show a good deal of emotion confuses her more than a little, since she's under the strict impression that bioroids are supposed to be something akin to organic robots, what with no capacity for emotions and all. As to _why_ they're showing emotion, that in and of itself will be explained later on as well.

That is all for now, I am afraid. Thank you all for reading, and as always, favorite, follow, review, and stay safe!


	10. Past

**Update: August 21, 2016**

I am not dead, I promise!

So I realize that I've been gone for a bit, so I'll leave the tedious explanations for later and just let you continue reading. Said tedious explanation is at the bottom of the chapter, if you oh sop desire to just check up on me first before indulging your crave for Appleseed.

Disclaimer: Ez dut jabea Appleseed (Basque)

* * *

Artemis woke up as her internal clock went off and got her body out of bed, analyzing her room quickly. A queen bed pushed into a corner, a vanity dresser with a mirror next to the door, an empty open closet next to the bed, and a table with a lamp on it across from the bed. The rest of the room was bare, and the layout of the room left a large empty space for a rug on the floor.

Artemis huffed a cynical laugh as she realized she was scanning for threats before she had even gone five steps away from her bed. That was how she was – no grogginess, no sleepy eyes, no foggy head for her when she woke. She could have been in the middle of stage five sleep and she could have been woken up by the _slightest_ sound that didn't register as normal.

So, yes, she had heard Tereus when he was walking around the house, probably checking to make sure that everything was secure. And yes, she had woken up when he had called to her in the car. But she couldn't bring herself to let him know that she was awake. Her curiosity had won her over.

Artemis frowned as she realized exactly what she had done last night. Aside from playing the innocent and abandoned little girl that she most certainly was _not_ , she had confirmed her suspicions of him. He acted like an overprotective wolf, circling around until he was positive that nothing would harm his home, or anyone inside. And that unnerved her, because something inside of her had… _wanted_ that security. She just didn't have it in her anymore to do the checks herself. She felt weary in a way that she could not explain, only that it was not a weariness of the body. It was a relief to not have to do her own perimeter check. It felt like a rare blessing from heaven to not have to be on guard at all times. Tereus somehow made her feel safe enough to break all of the routines and protocols that were ingrained into her from day one.

And it wasn't just that Lance had demanded that Tereus watch her. He could have just stopped at locking the doors and windows. Instead he went through each room, checking for anything that might pose a threat, while staying quiet in deference to her being 'asleep'. He didn't even bother to try and change her. Just pulled a warm comforter over her body, and brought in her belongings and weapons. He didn't even look through her belongings, despite his blatant misgivings and clear distrust of her in general. As much as she disgusted him, he still respected her and her privacy.

"Hmm. A gentleman, despite not being human," Artemis mused to herself. This would be interesting. Artemis resolved herself to her morning stretches and warmup, and settled for special military pushups in lieu of her normal run. After all, Tereus had minded her privacy, the polite thing to do would be to stay in the house until he woke up. The last thing she wanted was to get herself or her 24/7 watch dog in trouble because she wanted to go for a run. After all of her normal routine was done, she settled down to meditate for a while. She had a list of things to sort out in her head.

Starting with her watch dog.

An interesting one, he was. She could sense his hatred of her during the debriefing back at headquarters, when she had met Athena. He resented her for all of the pain and misery she had caused, and rightly so. She didn't have a happy past at all. But she had fully expected him to leave her in the car last night, or wake her up, or leave her stuff in the car, or do something _other_ than what he did. Hell, she hadn't expected him to even drive her to the safe house. His responses confused her immensely. He as almost as moody as some of the female researches back at Circe's lab. One minute they were all angry and riled up over one thing and the next they were crying and in need of extensive amounts of chocolate.

Artemis allowed herself a small smile. No, he wasn't moody, he was bipolar. One minute wanting to gut her and the next caring for her as if she mattered to him more than just the assignment he was given. Now she frowned, considering something else that she had forgotten up until now. Bioroids shouldn't have these conflicting sides to them. They shouldn't be so protective. Yoshitsune showed emotion, yes, but it was consistent – he loved his work.

Tereus…with him it was like he was flipping between two different people. Did he even realize what he was doing last night when he was going through the house? Now that was concerning. Would this split personality thing impair his reliability as a clear-headed ESWAT member? Not for guarding her, heavens knew she didn't need to be protected. But out in the field, when Circe did retaliate, would his two sides compromise him emotionally? And, oh god, Commander Lance. This could mess Tereus up big time. How to fix this…

Artemis's eyes shot open as she realized what was going through her head. Why was she worrying over Tereus? He could take care of himself, as sure as she could. There was no need to interfere and delve into him, especially if he didn't want her help. Artemis scoffed. Yeah, she would be the last person he asked for any help, if he asked at all. Stubborn males. But in any case, he was more likely to ask his other teammates for help before the new recruit that he disliked with a vengeance.

A soft knock on the door tore Artemis away from her musings. "Artemis? You awake?" came Tereus's voice from the other side of the door.

"Yes, I am." She heaved herself off of the floor and opened the door. Tereus was standing out in the hall in a muscle shirt and ratty jeans, and looking like he would rather be anywhere else and right here all at the same time. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing. But its five in the morning, and I heard you moving around in your room. Figured you would want some breakfast when you were finished doing whatever it was you were doing."

Artemis blinked. He had cooked? As in _cooked_? She sniffed the air slightly, not smelling anything like breakfast foods. Of course, Tereus noticed and chuckled.

"No, I didn't cook." Well, that was…a relief? A surprise? "Today." Oh great. More time to wonder what might happen. "We're going to finish your combat tests today, and then we're meeting Briareos, Deunan, Yoshitsune, and Hitomi – another bioroid what works for Athena - and going to the city to eat, and then Hitomi and Deunan are taking you shopping."

Artemis blinked again, her jaw going slack. "Sh-shopping?" she spluttered. "Why on earth do I need to go shopping?"

Tereus rolled his eyes. "I asked her the same question, and she wouldn't answer. But she's getting her way, whether we like it or not. When that woman gets an idea, there's no shaking her off of it."

Another moment passed before Artemis shook herself. "Uh…okay…I guess…Do I need to bring anything?"

Tereus looked thoughtful for a moment. "No, I don't think so."

Artemis was cautious about her next question. She took a good look at his relaxed posture. "Can I carry one of my guns?"

Ah, there it was. His jaw tightened, his spine straightened, his eyes narrowed. "I have no reason to say that you can't, seeing as how you're an active ESWAT operative. But I don't think it's a good idea for you to go out armed."

O-kay, let's not go down that road. "Okay then. Can I borrow a pair of sweatpants and a tank? I only have weapons in that pack."

Now that was a lie, but she wasn't going to tell Tereus that. She didn't want to give him the chance to suspect that she might be armed if she closed the door and changed. And, to be completely honest, seeing his flustered face amused her a bit.

"Uh, sure – hang on." He practically ran down to his room, disappeared into it for a second or two, and came back out with a small stack of folded clothes that he handed to her with a tint of red on his face. Artemis hid a smile on her face and tugged the tank over her head, still dressed in her black suit. A small giggle bubbled up in her throat as she heard Tereus choke on his breath when she pulled the loose sweatpants up to her hips and tied it.

"Alright. Let's go." She slipped past him and walked down to the first floor. She shoved her feet into her combat boots and called back up to the male who was still upstairs. "You coming?"

Tereus came down slowly, gripping the banister extra hard. After a deep breath, he walked over, pulled his jacket on, and opened the door for her. "After you."

"Mhmm." Artemis walked out the door and got into the car, not giving Tereus the opportunity to act more like a knight. He slid into the driver's seat and huffed a breath. "Just a warning. Deunan may be a tomboy when she's in uniform, but she had her feminist side. And give Hitomi a credit card and let her lose in a mall, she turns from a formal Vice Minister into a total fashionista."

Artemis sniffed. "I've run a six-k marathon. They can't be that bad."

Tereus level a look at her, humor glinting in his eye. "You have no idea."

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

"Hitomi, I think we have enough clothes now…" Artemis deadpanned as she followed the brunette out of the thirty-seventh store they had visited that day. Tereus, Yoshitsune, and Briareos were behind them, watching silently as Artemis was pushed and pulled and prodded over and over again. Probably all laughing to themselves too.

"Girl, you needed an entire wardrobe and furniture for the house. Be lucky that she didn't drag you through half the city," Deunan muttered besides her. She had enjoyed the first half of the shopping spree, but as it wore on grew slightly irritated. In her opinion, forty-three bags and seventeen boxes were enough. And the stuff for the house? Forget it.

"Shall we get her back to the safe house so we have the excuse to rest?" Artemis murmured. "We can make the guys set up the furniture for a while."

"God, yes." Deunan ran up to catch Hitomi before she wandered into another store. "Hitomi, let's go back to the safe house and let Artemis try on all of the clothes you bought," she said, catching the other woman's arm and dragging her back toward the car that they had come in. "Come on you guys," Deunan glared at her and Hitomi's boyfriends. Artemis gave an amused huff as Briareos and Yoshitsune reluctantly joined the other two women.

"Told you they were bad," Tereus said in her ear. He sounded amused, and rightly so. She had no delusions that he and the other men had enjoyed watching her suffer at the hands of the two shopping addicts. No doubt because they finally had someone else to share the pain with.

"Mhmm. Could have been worse."

She heard him huff a laugh and the locks disengage from Tereus's car. "Come on. I'd hate to let them loose in the house. Lord only knows what Hitomi would do if given the time to do it."

Artemis shook her head and gave him a small smile as she got into the car. "She reminds me of-"

She stopped herself short. Tereus was the last person who would want to hear about her past. Hell, even _she_ didn't want to rehash all of this again. They were on tenuous grounds at best right now, and bringing up anything from back then might very well displace everything that had fallen _into_ place, so to speak.

God, they had only met the day before yesterday, hadn't they? And look where they were already. She was almost completely comfortable being around him. She was wearing his clothes for Christ sake! And yet as idiotic of a thought that it was, she didn't want him to go back to hating her. It wasn't just that it would make living or working with him hard. It was that it didn't sit well with her when he was so cold and distant.

But that was another problem, wasn't it? She shouldn't get attached to him – to anyone. Even if this trial period with ESWAT did work, the next day wasn't promised to anyone, and the facts were that even if by some miracle she and Tereus somehow worked, she would hurt a lot more if he died than he would if she died. He was a bioroid, after all. Which effectively trashed that entire scenario, didn't it. He wouldn't get emotionally involved with anyone else other than Briareos and Deunan, because of genetic ties and experiences. And if the ESWAT thing did fall through, then it would be best if she wasn't attached to anyone.

Artemis leaned her head on the cool glass and watched the world go by outside of the bubble of the car. Proceed with caution, indeed.

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Tereus watched Artemis out of the corner of his eye. She had shut down again, emotionally speaking. He couldn't read anything out of her, just that she was drained. Her face was carefully blank, posture tense but not agitated. Like a clam that shut itself off from the outside world. This girl was like one of those old key ring puzzles. You could spend hours trying to get one ring loose, but bump the thing in the wrong way and you're right back where you started – with a jumbled mess. She had been so relaxed all day. Well, as relaxed as someone like her could have been.

She was smart, witty, and wicked fast at thinking. Somehow she had managed to flow between having a conversation with Yoshitsune about air resistance and hydraulics to debating with his girlfriend about why she would _not_ allow her to buy that pink frilly top, before jumping into a conversation with him and Briareos about combat style, then being yanked into debating personal transport with Deunan. Nothing fazed her, yet she paid full attention to the task at hand. She even took the insane shopping in stride. Until just now. Then she just…retreated into herself. Whatever musings were going on in her head were for herself only.

 _"She reminds me of-"_ Tereus could only imagine that she was going to bring up some past acquaintance. Probably from that Android-Cyborg project. She said that she was the only one of twenty-five to survive the transformation, and that she wasn't put down because she had learned to behave herself. If that type of reclusive attitude was all she grew up with, then there must be a whole lot of guilt hiding behind that calm face. Even if she was an android, there was still a part of her that was human and had probably craved human empathy, probably felt that she could have done more to save the few beings that shared her unlucky hand.

Tereus ran a hand over his face quickly. This had to be taken care of soon, before it caused problems left, right, and center. He stole a glance at the GPS- they would be at the safe house in another few minutes. Would waiting until tonight to confront her about this be a good idea? Probably not. The analytical side of him said that she was vulnerable enough to open up now, and if he left this until later, she would shore up her defenses again and he would get nothing out of her.

So then logically, the only other choice he had was to question her now. And that meant stalling for time. He glanced again at the quiet girl besides him. She was, for all intents and purposes, dead to her surroundings. Even if she had been paying attention to where he had been driving yesterday, she was too out of it now to notice if they took the long way back to the safe house. So he deliberately missed their exit and broke the heavy silence that had fallen since the beginning of the car ride.

"Who?"

* * *

Lord have mercy, I have the worst headache right now. It has been oppressively hot and I do not appreciate it in the slightest bit.

Anyway, I just figured that I would put this out before I moved. Yes, I am moving. Granted, its only to my college dorm, but still. Two hours away from home with no car and classes until late at night sometimes. These past two weeks have been spent getting myself ready to leave. I mean all my contacts needed to be notified so that they won't be expecting me to show up anywhere anytime soon, netting up the new electronics, dorm shopping, dorm packing, going through my wardrobe, all of it. I still really need to clean my room from top to bottom, and then the last few days I have to myself is going to be spent with my friends. Yes, a whole 'See You Again' type of thing.

So I just figured I would put this out before I see what's happening with classes, if I'm going to have the time and patience to keep writing as often as I have been. I'm hoping that classes and schoolwork is going to get me back into the flow of writing as often as I used to back during high school, but we will have to see.

As always favorite, review, follow, and stay safe!


	11. Trust

**Update: Sept. 12, 2016**

Well, I'm not exactly 'settled in' at college yet. Dorm wise? Oh yeah, everything in it's place and all that. Classes are going to slaughter me, revive me, run me ragged, and then slaughter me again. Who's smart idea was it for me to skip Calc 101 and go straight to 102?

Oh yeah. Mine.

Oops.

Yeah, I'm going to need a tutor soon, since my calc honors class from high school is nothing like the calc 101 class here. Credit wise, I already 'took' calc 101 with that honors class. I'm still missing a lot of material, so it's going to take a while to catch up.

Don't even get me started with chemistry. Just don't.

Other than the math class and chem lecture and lab, I have a linguistics course which is really freaking cool, since my professor is just so into the topic, and we actually have some cool conversations where people actually speak, despite there being easily 300+ people in the lecture hall at once. Then there's the required undergrad class that everyone has to take, and its basically an hour nap for me. I have another class called media literacy, where we're just talking about how media can be interpreted and all that. And in between all those, there are scheduled review classes, and they really help for calc and chem.

But anyway, that's that with cllege. Other than the actual hard classes, I love it. So I won't hold you any longer.

Watch for a cameo in this chappie!

Disclaimer: હું Appleseed માલિક નથી (phonetic pronunciation: Huṁ Appleseed mālika nathī) (Gujarati)

* * *

"What?" Artemis turned to face Tereus. He kept his eyes on the road, deliberately keeping his posture cool.

"Who does Hitomi remind you of?" he asked again patiently. The girl besides him shifted a bit, seeming uncomfortable for the first time. Her eyes hardened ever so slightly as her jaw clenched and her hands balled up into fists, clenching at the fabric of her borrowed sweats.

"No one," she murmured and turned back to the window, resolutely not looking at him. Yeah, no way was she getting away with that half-assed answer.

"No offence, but that's bullshit."

He could practically _feel_ her bristle. Good. Getting her riled up would get him more honest answers. "Well, that may be, but I'm not too inclined to share," came the lipped response.

"Sorry, but you're going to have to. In case you forgot, you and I are partners, and as your _partner_ " he put emphasis on the word, "I'm asking you to tell me the truth."

Tereus heard Artemis huff quietly as she sank into the padded leather of her chair. She was silent a long while, probably trying to sort out his reason for perusing the topic. "Why do you want to know?"

"Because you're my partner," he said simply. "I may be a bioroid, but that doesn't mean I don't have a grasp on human emotions. Remember, I have Deunan and Briareos as the other members of my tem, and I work with Yoshitsune and Hitomi on a regular basis. And as tight as you pretend to be, there is something stewing underneath. If we're going to work together at all, we need to be on the same page. And that includes the truth. All of it."

That seemed to send her into another thinking session. "Are you sure you want to hear it? It's not the prettiest background a girl could have."

"All of it. So who does Hitomi remind you of?"

A sigh from her. "Her name was Ty Lee. She was one of the ones who made it through the transition in one piece. Really bubbly person. Liked pink a lot, fantastic gymnast. Flexible like you wouldn't believe, and specialized in hitting pressure points on the human body to incapacitate them. She had a thing for clothes, lots of them, and was an innocent person through and through. Wouldn't hurt a fly if it was drinking her blood dry." Her tone was morose. He could see why she wanted to shut down about this. Touchy subject much?

"What happened to her?"

"I was told to put her down. " And as much as she tried, she couldn't hide the wince as she said those words. So that was a problem area. If that girl had meant as little to Artemis as she claimed, then she shouldn't have a problem saying that.

"Artemis, they weren't put down like animals. They were as much a human as you are. Clear?"

She laughed a little, the sound more heart-wrenching than joyful. "Okay." Good enough for now.

"Good. What else happened?"

"Nothing. I…did as I was told, and the rest of us went back to training and life as usual. No one talked about what happened. We never did."

Tereus frowned. "Why not?"

"Because we were seen as machines before human. For us to show empathy toward a fallen comrade was the same as volunteering for a whipping."

" _Comrade_ , Artemis," Tereus sighed. "Whether or not Ty Lee or any of you lived up to Circe's expectations does not define your worth. She was as much a person as you are. You trained and fought side by side and understood each other on a deeper level than I think you want to acknowledge. That makes you all comrades, end of discussion."

Artemis fell silent and stared at her hands, lost in another thinking session. "Never thought of it that way," she finally admitted with a sigh. Tereus scoffed.

"Bunch of cutthroats you grew up with."

"No kidding."

Tereus took another wrong turn. "Well you do know that it's okay to mourn for a lost comrade. Just don't do it around Lance. He doesn't do well with tears."

That was better. Her laugh was more relaxed now. "Okay." She looked out of the window and frowned. "Where are we Tereus?"

He hid a soft smile of his own. "We're just taking the long way back."

She blinked. "We left HQ almost an hour ago. The safe house is only twenty minutes out of the city. How long could this _'long way'_ be?" Tereus didn't miss the slight inflection of her voice. She knew he was stalling.

Tereus outright grinned. "Tell me the long way didn't help you sort out some things."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

"Oh nothing really." Just everything.

"So then tell me."

"Tell me I'm wrong."

She blew a stream of hair through her lips, shifting a strand of hair away from her face, letting him glimpse the tattoos on the side of her head. "Fine, you aren't. Now why are we circling around the city?"

"Because," he started, "You needed to get some stuff out. I've seen Deunan and Briareos go ape-shit crazy when something is bugging them and they don't let it go. It impairs their performance. And before you use the _'I am an Android I don't have emotions'_ excuse," he said, cutting her off when she started to protest, "You were once human. Half of you is still human. I see it when you spar with us. You use your human instincts before your computerized responses. I saw it yesterday, when you were learning how to control a landmate. It frustrated you at first, but when you got the hang of it you were incredibly proud of yourself. I see it now, because you look completely confused at why I'm hounding you about this. You do have emotions, Artemis, and keeping them repressed might be the mark of a great warrior, but letting them out is the mark of a great person."

Artemis was silent for the longest time. Tereus let her sit there and digest what he has said. It was a lot to take in, to have someone care about you for the first time, when for as long as you could remember you weren't a person, but a thing.

Tereus did his own thinking in the quiet. Why was he hounding this? She shouldn't mean that much to him for him to want to fix her emotionally. And lord only knew, he wasn't the best person to be doing this. What he had said was true. She was his partner now, and he was supposed to look out for her, the same way she was supposed to look out for him. But did that logic justify his actions over the past forty-eight hours?

Tereus sighed to himself and finally made a correct turn, taking them out of the city and towards the safe house. Maybe it didn't. By the book, that obligation to each other was only mandatory when they were on duty. To take it past that was almost the same as interfering with her private life, and as far as he knew, the only people who did that were Deunan, Briareos, Yoshitsune, and Hitomi. And only them because they were paired off and dating. Everyone else didn't make a big fuss about someone's emotional status until it started compromising them on the field. Artemis hadn't shown any signs of cracking yet, so he had no reason to become involved. But at this point, it didn't matter all that much to him. He was growing increasingly protective of the girl besides him.

When he finally pulled into the driveway of the safe house, Tereus glanced over at Artemis. She still looked raw, completely embroiled in what he had said earlier. He gave her a little shake.

"Let's go. We've been gone long enough for Hitomi to turn the house pink and purple and for Deunan to blow up the kitchen with her cooking." He got out and opened her door for her, offering her a crooked grin.

Her own smile was only a slight lift in the corner of her mouth, but it was better than where she was a second ago. She got out and walked towards the front door as Tereus locked the car. He turned around to find Deunan dragging Artemis into the house, causing the girl to stumble through the doorway, and Hitomi pushed Yoshitsune and Briareos out.

"You guys are late! We had the entire evening planned out and you guys had the nerve to be _late_!" the little brunette screeched as she gave the two males another shove off of the front steps of the house. Deunan poked her head out of the house – that thankfully was still as he and Artemis had left it that morning – and grinned at Tereus.

"Sorry Tereus, but we're kicking you out for the night. I'm taking over as Artemis's watch for tonight." She winked at him and ducked back inside.

Tereus stood there and blinked. "What?"

"I dunno," Yoshitsune offered with a shrug. "We came, put all the boxes and bags down, and then the girls started going crazy, making phone calls and stuff. Then when you two showed up, they just kicked us all out." Just then, a take-out delivery car pulled up. Tereus guessed that food was probably one of the calls the blonde and brunette had made.

"They probably want to have a girls' night or something. Leave them be," Briareos said and turned back to his motorcycle.

"You sure we can Bri? Lance said he wanted Tereus watching her," Yoshitsune called after the cyborg, knowing that they all knew which 'her' he was referring to. Just as he was about to go back to the house and convince the girls to let them stay, Tereus put a placating hand on the other man's shoulders.

"It's fine. Let them have a night to themselves. Artemis won't act up, and Deunan is one of the most capable women I know. They'll be fine."

Yoshitsune looked uncertain for a bit, before he nodded and turned back to his own car. "Okay." Just before he ducked in, he asked, "So what do we do while waiting for them to be done?"

"Sports bar?" Briareos offered, to which the other two males nodded. "M'kay, just follow me then. There's a new one that just opened up last week not far from the training fields." Yoshitsune gave another nod and Tereus shot his male partner a thumbs up, and both ducked into their cars. A second later, Briareos's motorcycle roared and took off into the night. Yoshitsune was next, and Tereus took the rear. They stayed single file for the majority of the ride, giving Tereus more time to himself to think.

Incredible how fast things could change. How long ago was the Halcon incident? Almost a year now. Damn. He had to admit, he had changed over the past few months. Spending time with his team had helped with his emotional dysfunction, but hadn't cured it in the slightest. What was that new thing called? Temporal Dysplasia. No ability to recognize or feel emotion, sometimes no perception of time. Well, at least he was lucky enough to not have the second part of it. The first caused enough problems in his life. Tereus rubbed a hand over his face again. Well, now it seemed as if even the first part was fading away, at least a little. Anyway.

Tereus took the final left and pulled into the garage behind Yoshitsune, parking right next to the bluenette. He locked the doors and stood by, staring up at the night skyline while he waited for his other two companions to join him.

"You've been doing a lot of thinking," Briareos's voice said from behind him.

Tereus started and turned around. "What of it?"

"Oh, nothing much. Just wondering what brought it about."

"Yeah? Well I am too."

"That so." Briareos crossed his arms and kicked his head up. "Well, you let me know when you have it sorted out."

Tereus snorted. "Yeah, sure buddy. So while you're waiting for that, I'm getting smashed, thank you very much." Thank god for autopilot. Tereus heard Briareos grunt and walked into the bar. Looking over his shoulder, Tereus saw Yoshitsune getting off the phone, probably with his girlfriend. He shook his head. The guy was so whipped, it wasn't even funny. Glancing back at the hulking figure of Briareos, he amended his statement. Both of them were.

And that was another problem, wasn't it. Those two were so emotionally invested in their partners that, heavens forbid, the girls got hurt, those two would be a wreck and unable to perform out in the field. Tereus recalled the story of Colonel Hades and his father, General Uranus. How, when caught between an angry girlfriend who may or may not have shot him, and a pack of sleazy wolves who would most definitely shoot him, Briareos chose to take multiple bullets in the back to save the angry girlfriend, and launched them both into the sea. He had nearly died.

As Tereus walked into the sports bar and sat down next to Yoshitsune, he considered what the bluenette would have done if he were in that same position. As a bioroid, Yoshitsune would have tried to find another option, or if another escape was impossible, sacrifice himself and Hitomi in order to complete their mission. Then again, they were dating as well, so he was another variable in the equation of his team.

Tereus took a caution sip of his martini. Nice, not too strong or too sweet. He drank it all in one draft, he put the empty glass down and thought a little more about himself and his new partner. Could he put himself between a gun and Artemis? Could he put her safety first before the mission?

Well that was an idiotic statement. She wouldn't need him to do that, would she? Her stats were easily on par with his own, with Briareos's, with Deunan's. She wouldn't let herself be caught like that. If anything, she would do what she had to for the sake of the mission as well. With her background, she wouldn't hesitate to jump into the heat of battle. Hell, she'd be more likely to pull some crazy stunt that would end up working before needing someone else to help her.

"A screwdriver," he murmured to the bartender as he made his rounds. Well that was the end of that. No need to worry about Artemis as much as he had. Time to let loose. He glanced at Briareos and shook his head in pity. The amount of alcohol needed to mess that machine up was more than the bar could offer. Let him worry about how they were all getting home since he was still going to be coherent after two hours. His drink came and he downed it all at once.

* * *

A/N: So did you catch that little cameo? I gave the name again, but try to pin down where it came from!

So yeah, Tereus is just as confused as Artemis is. Oh, Temporal Dysplasia is totally a made up thing from another cameo! Incredibly rare, according to that universe, and the character that has it is working a specialized job because of it. The television series is a relatively new thing, so if you happen to stumble across it I do recommend watching it, at least if you're a sci-fi / mystery type person. I loved it, and am bouncing in my seat for the next season!

I'll let you all be for now, but on a slightly completely unrelated note, I've started a little poetry thing if any of you are into that. It's called A Compendium of Inspired Activity, if you're interested, and it's under my stories. Leave a request there if you want!

Until next time, review, follow, favorite, and stay safe fam!


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